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According to a study published in the medical journal Pediatrics in 2017, most moms aren't putting their babies to sleep on their backs, a position that ultimately reduces a baby's chance of dying from SIDS and other fatal sleep-related conditions.It's not that moms don't know this life-saving sleep safety tip, though — the study surveyed 3,297 mothers with children aged 2-6 months and found that how women intended to put their babies to sleep didn't always match up in practice. While 77.3 percent of mothers reported they usually (but not always) place their sleeping babies supine, only 43.7 percent both recognized the method as superior to stomach-sleeping and actually did it."What was new and hadn't been explored before was this idea of what people intended to do versus what they actually do," Dr. Eve Colson, a professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine and co-author of the study, told CNN. "What we found was that people intended to put their baby on their back but didn't always do that."If most moms know that back sleeping — a practice that's been publicized by the Safe to Sleep campaign and affirmed by pediatricians since 1994 — is safer than stomach-sleeping, why not commit to it every single night? As it turns out, new moms are turning to their own mothers and grandmothers and are receiving and listening to advice that conflicts with their pediatrician's."Grandmothers and aunts and everybody have told (mothers), if they have babies sleep on their bellies, they're more comfortable; they're not going to choke," said Dr. Robin Jacobson (not involved in the study), a pediatrician at Hassenfeld Children's Hospital at NYU Langone Health. "And because of that, a new mom who doesn't really have a lot of information is using information from everybody else in their life." According to the study, babies in communities or of cultures that rely more heavily on matriarchal advice than pediatrician intervention are more at risk for SIDS. "There's a lot more dependence on grandmothers and other senior family members as trusted sources, and lots of times, the information that you get from your family members is more persuasive than what you get from physicians and other sources," Dr. Rachel Moon, a pediatrician who has studied SIDS in African-American communities (not involved in the new study) told CNN.But we all do this — we take parenting advice from our moms and accept it 100 percent because they raised us and we turned out OK. Despite what our moms tell us, though, placing a baby on his or her back on a firm surface without pillows or blankets is the safest way to put the baby down to sleep, says the American Academy of Pediatrics. While policymakers are brainstorming more ways to make this information more available to every mom out there, it's on us to put the method into practice — and to share the information with all the new moms in our lives. It's a baby's life at stake, after all.