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 also gave up bf when ds was about 8 weeks as i hardly produced any milk but still co slept it made no difference apart from i had to get up to get his milk. i also put him in a little sleeping bag (baby one obviously) he used to wiggle across the bed and hated being swaddled

i agree it is not for everyone but when it felt so right i was not going to ignore that feeling

Oh good, something else to deter mothers from breast-feeding, cosleeping, and doing what's natural.

Piggy - how does this deter BF?

Piggy, suggest you watch the video I linked to earlier - if anything this should be encouragement to breastfeed (although am very wary of going down that road, as I said in my earlier post there must be more to it than first appears)

Thank you Hope - I thought I'd missed that bit but I see that was just conjecture.

That poor, poor man.

This no co sleeping advice is like advising abstinence rather than safe sex.

I co slept and then lied about it to my health visitor. Might it have been that she could've come and looked at my bed and suggested alternative bedding and sleeping positions, possibly a better mattress?

The midwives in the hospital where I had my 4 dd's regularly recommended tucking baby into bed with you, I was horrified for the first night as those beds are so narrow I worried all night! However I ended up unintentionally co sleeping with dd4 for the first two years.

The baby was not breastfed. The mother made the baby a bottle for the father to give.

On re-reading, it seems I'd concluded he was drunk from this: "The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths concludes the risk of cot death is increased in co-sleeping of parents who imbibe alcohol prior to sleep," she said. But, actually, it seems she didn't know much about the subject anyway.

The thing about formula feeders sleeping differently IS true, I'm afraid. Mums who have never breastfed have been seen in studies to sleep differently with their babies than mums who have breastfed. Note that this also 'counts' if the mum has breastfed before, but not with that baby. The mum's positioning in the bed is generally more defensive in breastfeeding dyads; mums and babies exhibit greater sleep synchronisity and the mum is roused more easily. Combined with the protective effect of bf against SIDS this all adds up to bed-sharing being less risky for breastfeeders than formula feeders.

Note this is not a dig at ff; it is scientific evidence, and founded on sound evolutionary principles. It is not for scientists (or anyone else) to dictate what people do with their babies at night. That is the parent's decision. However, it is a decision that should be made in an informed way, which is why it's important to acknowledge the relevance of feeding method in this issue.

See here for an overview of the evidence.

Incidentally, in the case reported here, we know virtually nothing of the circumstances surrounding the death of this baby, so it's entirely wrong both to judge, and to use it as a warning of any sort against co-sleeping. It's interesting to note that in cases where fathers are the main carer of a baby, they may sleep in a similar way to a breastfeeding mother.

Like I said, the bottom line is it's down to the parents' personal perception of their own level of risk at any one point in time (and the level and type of risk they consider acceptable, vs the benefits of whatever activity).

There are some things that are essentially always no-nos, such as bed-sharing when under the influence of drugs/some meds/ sofa-sharing etc, and then there are risks which are harder to quantify, in which individuals may differ considerably, such as feeding method, smoking in pregnancy, infant birth weight etc.

As far as feeding method goes, you are of course correct in a sense, however I suspect that you might be reading what you want to read - Sleep Lab (and other) studies have shown with some consistency that feeding method affects the way mums and babies sleep, and that the ways in which they differ might reasonably be thought to be factors which affect the overall riskiness of bed-sharing in terms of both SIDS and accidental death.

Ultimately, there is always a combination of variables to consider, and these are often not static - they change from day to day. Parents need to be given the relevent information relating to risk factors so they can decide for themselves (and take responsibility for making that descision rather than farming it out to family/friends/health-care professionals). It is as wrong to simply say 'it is safe to bed-share if bf', as it is to say 'it is unsafe to bed-share when ff'... These are simplistic messages, as beloved of FSID and some HCPs, but they tend not to do much good in the real, multifactorial, world. I we need to see a complete shift from such simplistic simple messages to provision of information and a recognition of the importance of multiple factors and active decision making.

My DS's birth mother was judged very very harshly for having him in bed with her. It was not the only reason he was removed but it was deemed important enough to be mentioned.

I know a lot about what she did and she didnt do and know she couldnt keep him safe but I am horrified at this. She wasnt drinking etc because she was in a unit.
It made me sad. No-one was taking notes and tutting when my babies were in bed with me. This girl was doing what a huge amount of people see as normal and desirable and she was being 'marked down' for it.

That is very sad, MrsDV. :(
It is madness how something that is done naturally all over the world is deemed "unsafe" in the UK (and other western places) - and why? because of the misuse of statistics? because some people can't think sensibly about the safety of their child and disregard the guidelines (take that woman in America who killed two babies by rolling on them in her sleep while she was drunk. Once = tragic accident, twice = criminally irresponsible)

While I was trying to find the news report about that American woman, I came across this - a nurse who is trying to "put an end to co-sleeping" in one area in America as she blames it for 1 in 3 infant deaths in that area. Not sure how she plans to do it but it will really come to something if they criminalise co-sleeping!!

But isn´t the point that they weren´t co sleeping, but had fallen asleep exhausted with baby in the bed?

I respect the decision not to co-sleep; to me though, this is the way families have probably slept for thousands of years, and many still do in other parts of the world. But I loved co-sleeping with my DS.

I worked nightshifts and my OH would also co-sleep with my DS, though I think he slept with one eye open,still does actually,even though DS is in his own room!. (Last night OH got up EVERY time DS coughed!)

Heart breaking stories on here of deaths from co-sleeping though. :(

Soverylucky, I'm sorry to keep disagreeing with you, but you're wrong again, the report does not say bf and co-sleeping is proven to be safe (would that researchers could say that!); it is all about the ways in which bf and co-sleeping (or strictly, bed-sharing) have co-evolved, and the reason the section on ff is in there is precisely because there are clearly identifiable deviations from what we see as the evolved pattern (an evolved pattern which has clear protective features for the infant during sleep).

This doesn't prove ff/bed-sharing is dangerous, but it does represent a further step away from the norm, in an evolutionary sense, and steps away from the norm often have negative consequences.

That said, on balance it might be considered that the benefits of bed-sharing are considered to outweigh any theoretical additional risk, and that is for each individual to decide for themselves.