Last week, I wrote about the American Academy of Pediatrics latest pronunciamento on preventing crib death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which re-emphasized that babies should be put to sleep on their backs.

But there are signs that while most new parents are well aware that stomach-sleeping is a risk factor for crib death, more and more of them are flouting the back-sleeping recommendation for one simple reason: babies sleep better on their tummies. They wake less often, and are more likely to achieve that Nirvana (for parents) known as "sleeping through the night" at an earlier age.

This quiet bassinet revolution is revealed on the Web, where feelings of anonymity and community combine to let parents feel safe in revealing their secret. According to a New York Times article, blogs such as BloggingBaby and web sites such as Baby Center reveal that many parents are rejecting the AAP recommendation. A Baby Center poll of more than 24,000 users of the site found that 42 percent said they put their babies to sleep stomach down.

The Baby Center poll doesn't claim to be scientific, but it does make me wonder if it's time for NIH to revisit its estimates of baby sleeping positions. According to NIH figures, in 1994, when the feds launched their public education campaign on the dangers of tummy sleeping, 70 percent of infants were sleeping on their stomachs, and by 2002 that had dropped to 11.3 percent. Over the same period, deaths from SIDS dropped by half, to 0.57 per 1,000 live births.

Is the number of stomach-sleepers on the rise? Was it ever as low as NIH estimated? It's not easy for parents to admit they are putting their child at risk, even if the risk is statistically very small.

Another factor may be playing in to the resistance to back-sleeping, and that is the stunning increase in rates of plagiocephaly, a deformation of the skull that is more common in infants who sleep on their backs. Doctors say that risk can be reduced by making sure infants spend time on their stomachs while awake, but that message doesn't seem to have broken through.