to post this as a precautionary tale - co-sleeping

[SylvanianFamilies]

Baby dies in father's bed

Disclaimer - I've never been against co-sleeping, but have never managed to do it (just can't sleep when baby is in bed even if I try) - but in a recent conversation with a friend she admitted she would never do it for fear of suffocating the baby. I thought she was being over-anxious until I read this today.

I co-slept with both of my dds until they were toddlers. They both had cots but never settled and I found I could at least get some sleep if we co-slept. They were both fine and lived to tell the tale. DH could never settle with either of them in the bed though and used to end up sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

RitaMorgan, that is the leaflet given to me by the hospital. I wonder how many give it out or if it is linked to those with 'baby friendly' status?

I co-slept with my DD in my hospital bed and no midwife suggested I do otherwise.

I was given the LLL sheet on safe co-sleeping when I was discharged from hospital after DD1 was born. I told the HV I was co-sleeping and she said that was fine. Had a different HV with DD2 and told her I was co-sleeping and she also said it was fine and added that it made BF much easier. I think it depends on your PCT.

Three in a Bed by Deborah Jackson is a really good book for anyone interested in reading about co-sleeping.

My hospital had baby friendly status too midori

DS was very screamy after birth (to the point of the post-natal ward giving collective daggers at me) and I struggled to get up. A night midwife came and tucked him next to me in bed and we haven't looked back, though a day midwife scolded me for having him where he was placed!

I do find the bottle-feeding nonsense borderline offensive. My natural urge to curl round him wasn't lost because we couldn't breastfeed (don't read that as wouldn't). Nor does bottle feeding mean I slept like a lump or he magically slept 3-4 hours between bottles because formula is magic or something. Breastfeeding isn't the key to being maternal.

The majority of accidents in co-sleeping are to do with it being unplanned.

Falling asleep accidently can mean that your bed and arrangement of the covers are unsuitable. If you are used to cosleeping and have done it since the baby was born, the bed arrangements will be optimal and the mother will be well practised at waking at the slightest baby-thing.

If the baby is far away and the other is used to sleeping deeply, and she doesn't have anymore the same high level of hormones in her body from being very close to her newborn, and the bedcovers are arranged dangerously, then bringing the baby into bed for a minute and then falling asleep will be dangerous.

The one night I was in hospital after having DD I actually co slept with her. It kinda started because I just wanted to look at her. lol But a midwife seen me and didn't have a problem with it.

Then when we got home DD wouldn't settle to sleep on her own so we fell into cosleeping basically which we did until she was 3 months. She's 3.5 now and still occasionally goes through phases of sleeping in my bed.

When she was a baby though I slept with my arm curled around above her head with my palm facing the mattress. It basically meant it was physically impossible to roll towards her, I'd have to break or dislocate my shoulder to have managed it.

Co-sleeping if done properly is very safe.

favarolles - I am like that! DD sleeps in a cot durign the evening and I am constantly checkin gto see if she is OK. I take her to my bed when I am ready to sleep. I feel anxious and find it difficult to relax and fall asleep if she is not there nice and safe next to me. that's what 3 years of combined co-sleeping does to you!

I have had HVs who were horrified when I said I co-sleep and others who were more relaxed and just explained about safe co=sleeping.

i also co slept with DS2 from birth, OP is only annoyed me as I think co sleeping IS safe when done properly, alot of scraemongering

Thankyou Jacksonpollocks I have no clue why FFing or bottle feeding (using EBM) mothers are assumed to put all basic mothering instincts in the bin as soon as a bottle is used. Same as assuming they can't interact or bond or do skin to skin. Utter rubbish.

I have yet to read an anti-cosleeping horror story where safe cosleeping advice was followed. In this story, tragic though it is, the baby is sleeping next to the father, which is a big no-no for such a young baby.

I believe there is also a difference between bfing and ffing when cosleeping, though I am not sure of the reasoning behind this. I suspect it may be that bfing mothers are thought to be slightly more aware of their baby when cosleeping than ff mothers.

On another mothering forum a fellow cosleeper told of her baby who vomited, started choking, and would have died if she had not been cosleeping. So I imagine that for every tragedy we read of, there is a tragedy that did not happen thanks to cosleeping, but non-tragedies don't make headlines.

Jackson - I don't think the formula feeding risk is about the mother being unmaternal, it's just statistically ff babies are at an increased risk. I assume the breastfeeding/lighter sleeping thing is just something physiological of because of hormones or something, but I dont know the mechanism it works by. Most SIDS advice is based on stats though without a definite understanding of why certain things increase or decrease risk.

Bit of a leap to suggest co sleeping (the safe variety) should not be done because of this article.

Reading it you could equally say don't formula feed.

I do not think the above sentence but it makes the same leap

Jackson & Katie - the formula / breast divide is thought to do with hormonal differences in the mother nothing to do with instinct

Oh what a load of bollocks. More paranoia aimed at women who might not want to buy into the whole you-are-inubators-and-then-consumers-of-cot-based-products insanity.

There is fuck all wrong with breast-feeding your baby lying down with you, and sleeping together.

How else do you think the fucking human race evolved and survived till now?

We all know about the drink and drug addlement exception, and cushions/sofas.

Sorry but I'm fucked off with all this.

I have co slept with all 4 of mine. Bottle fed 2 and breastfed 2 for 16 months each. I would not have let my DH co sleep with them. When we did it, we had no pillows, no duvets (only used sheets) and I slept in the middle with baby in the crook of my right arm and DH on the left. We are non smokers and if DH had a drink then he slept on the sofa. I have slept with one eye open for almost 11 years now! (That's how it feels anyway) I also carried them all in slings. I have been criticised for both. My midwives have all been fine with it.

My SIL put her baby (3 weeks) to sleep face down on a pillow in the middle of her and her DP with a duvet up to her armpits ("because she likes it and looks cozy!") I told her "WTF are you playing at?!!!!" and she said "Well you do it, so what's your problem?" She really couldn't see what was wrong with it! (She also was feeding a jar of spag bol at 3 months and feeding cows milk sometimes at 8 weeks because she didn't like getting her boobs out in public and baby didn't like formula!)

So basically, I think it's good to make people aware of the risks and we have to accept that there are some stupid, stupid people out there.

Most of us research our options thoroughly, consider our choices carefully and then make an informed decision based on what we consider to be best for our babies.

We planned to co-sleep with DD. When our NCT teacher asked if anyone planned to co-sleep, I was the only one to raise a hand (DH didn't). Most of our group have ended up with their babies in their beds, so I think it is realistic to assume you will and plan for it. We have a super king size bed, a co-sleeper cot and now that DD is in the cot in her own room most of the time we have a bed guard on my side of the bed so that she can sleep away from DH. Mostly she sleeps with her head on my arm, so I can't roll on her. Occassionally she sleeps on her tummy on my chest. She slept on her tummy on DH's chest for about an hour last week for the first time at 10 months. I really think that it is possible for FF mothers like me to co-sleep safely enough to make it a reasonable thing to do, particularly if you give your baby a separate space to sleep in.

FSID are very anti co-sleeping because they believe women are too stupid to do it safely so rather than give out advice on how to co-sleep, they tell people not to do it, in much the same way as the government believes pregnant women cannot tell the difference between a glass of wine and a bottle.

I lost all respect for FSID when they ran a really nasty campaign a couple of years ago which basically implied your baby would die if you co-slept.

happy - at your SIL, just shows that it makes more sense to give everyone the guidelines on how to do it safely, than to just tell them not to. Does she even know how lucky she was?

Thousands of people co-sleep everynight and the reason that stories like this end up in the papers is because it is very rare and therefore newsworthy. I would not let reading a story like this put me of co-sleeping, anymore than a story about a cot death would stop me putting a child to sleep in a cot. It is tragic for the family involved but to use it as a precautionary tale is being a bit over the top.

There is a massive problem with the SIDS research. They confound factors together so much that it is impossible to separate out all the different elements to weigh up the risks properly, If you take out alcohol and drugs, what are the risks of co-sleeping? Or what is the actual risk of sleeping on their front if there aren't other risk factors? It is impossible to tell. FSID (who fund lots of the research and do most publicity) seem happy to just issue blanket statements without letting families make informed decisions.

Christine - that could have been the campaign I mentioned earlier. They handpicked the info they wanted and spread the biased word far and wide. I remember an interview on Jeremy Vine with a spokeswoman from FSIDS. She more or less said that co-sleeping = certain death, and was very put out when callers spelt out the facts from the actual research itself, which clearly showed a link between drug use, alcohol and smoking with SIDS and nothing else.

It probably was faverolles. The one on here had a little bedtime song (like 'hush little baby don't you cry') which then stopped abruptly and then some words saying something along the lines of 'co-sleeping can cause SIDS'

It absolutely infuriated me and has made me loathe FSID ever since. Stupid organisation alienating the very people it's meant to support

Cot death was the thing I feared most when I was a new mother. I never co-slept with DS, but I did with DD as there was only an 11 month gap between them and I was bf, so there was a good chance I would've keeled over from exhaustion if I hadn't.

The thing is, the guidelines change all the time! When I wazir with DS I was told not to, then when I had DD o was told it was fine. When speaking to my HV a couple of years later I was told it was again a bad thing.