To think the new blanket ban on co-sleeping (new NICE guidelines warning of dangers of co-sleeping with under 1's announced today) may be going too far?

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Of course NICE have a duty to inform parents of research that can inform their parenting choices, particularly advising about any risk factors relating to SIDS.

But in proposing that all parents should be advised of dangers of co-sleeping during the first year have they perhaps got the balance wrong? Co-sleeping can (I believe from everything I've read) be relatively safe provided other risk factors, such as smoking and drinking or other drugs are not a factor too, and if steps are taken to avoid over-heating (duvets should be avoided?)

The adviser mentions that co-sleeping may make BFing easier, or be culturally preferred, but have they taken these things sufficiently into account in the way the advice has been put forward, and also the way it is being reported on the News (I watched the ITV news at lunch-time and found the advice given was rather strongly worded in my view)

I enjoyed co-sleeping with my dd and ds, and it worked well for us, also facilitating extended (or natural term) BFing. Being close to my babies was very important to them and me, and part of a whole approach to parenting which I feel has given them a very secure base from which to go out confidently and independently to explore the wider world.

Would be interested to know how others feel about this?

Would also say .... A couple of generations back we did have a cot death in the family - my granny's eldest dd. So I've always been particularly aware of how devastating it is and would of course do anything reasonable to minimise the risks, both for my own DC and for others.

*also no mattress topper. The mattress should be firm :) I forgot how many little guidelines there were about co-sleeping!

Here's some for those who are considering trying it kellymom.com/parenting/nighttime/familybed/

Mmm never wean before 17 weeks? Every mum I mixed with in the late 80s weaned between 3/4 months. No one I
Knew waited longer. As per the guidelines.

We all put our babies to sleep in their tummies with duvets and tied cot bumpers around the cots.

No one I knew co slept as a method just fell asleep feeding their baby in bed.

Pregnant women and parents would be paralysed by fear if they read and try to follow every guideline.

Cosleep or not as suits you. It really doesn't matter in the long run.

Breastfeeding or bottle feed what suits you. Far too much hysteria and emotion around this. It's a personal choice and noone else's business.

Sling/have a cot/have a pram/put your baby down or carry it around all the time.

In the grand scheme of life it really really does not matter a flying fuck.

Terrible things happen randomly to babies and children. And generally no one is to Blame and there's no good reason.

bertiebotts hits the nail totally on the head, SIDS is mercifully very rare.

It's incredibly difficult to do reliable research when you may only have a tiny number of babies who died co-sleeping, in a car seat, in a cot, with parents in the room, without parents, at night, having a nap.

Cross that information with BF/FF, age, birthweight, prematurity and details about their parents and you have a statistical nightmare as there are such small numbers of babies with really similar case histories to compare.

I've tried, and failed to find, a rigorous, peer reviewed paper that convinces me that Co-sleeping is a significant risk.

Also, the more fuss is made about co-sleeping, the more likely people are only to do it when they are totally sleep deprived or their baby is ill and grumpy. No way could you have applied modern safe co sleeping to DD1, she only ever fetched up in our bed out of desperation. She simply didn't keep still.

This is way different to planned co-sleeping, with a content BFing baby like DD2, who never wriggled under the covers or tried to fall out of bed, because in the crock of my arm is where she felt safe and wanted to be.

Agree with retropear.

Guidelines quoted ad infinitum when some monster masquerading as a mum uses formula or weans earlier than 6 months, yet guidelines 'are just guidelines' when it suits.

MN hypocrisy at its best.

I don't think mumsnet makes people out to be monsters if they formula feed. They do encourage breast feeding and offer great advice. I had lots of support when switching to formula.

It's just a very emotive topic.

If you go onto a website called pubMed you can make your own mind up about co-sleeping. Just type in SIDS risk and you'll bet lots of clinical studies.

Personally with a tiny baby it makes me uncomfortable, DH rolled on ds1 after a particularly bad night and I never had a small baby in our bed again.

But, we found having them in a separate room made for better sleepers for our 3 and that certainly isn't advocated either.

Sarcy - I slept in my dressing gown - warm arms and shoulder :) ds had no blankets or pillows near him at all - he was in a woombie unless it was warm. And the dressing gown made it easier to bf at night as the front opened.

Curiosity you've obviously missed an awful lot of the threads I've read then.

It isn't for me - I slept terribly the few times I tried it with DD (usually out of desperation when she was I'll/teething). I need my sleep and I need my space. And I suffered from anxiety when DD was small so it would have been detrimental in our case.

But I think it's probably a perfectly valid/safe choice if you follow guidelines. The headlines seem a bit overblown when you look at what the evidence/guidelines are actually saying. It's the same as every parenting choice: nothing is totally risk free and there's always potential for worry/guilt - it's in the job description!

Had all of my three in cots in our room(including twins) until 6 months.There was no need to co- sleep.I wouldn't have slept knowing they were at risk.

My DD completely and utterly refused to sleep in a Moses basket or cot since the day we bought her home. She screamed and screamed the house down. At 4 months she started her every hourly awakenings at night, so there was no way I could survive without cosleeping.

I really dislike the mumsnet tendency though that unless you breast feed/co sleep and the most ridiculous expression in the world baby wear you are somehow depriving your baby for the rest if it's life.

You really arnt. Neither are you a better mother if you do/don't.

It really doesn't make any difference at all in the big scheme of life.

Retroper I have read those types of threads too on here. They can be very Nasty too.

The thing that worries me about this type of catch-all policy is that it might prevent people accessing the information to help them make the safest plan possible for the times when co-sleeping happens because everyone is just too tired to get up to re-settle the baby in its cot. I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a friend who had just had a baby, saying that to try and stay awake during night feeds she got up and sat in a chair - which is a more dangerous place to be if you think you're likely to drop off.

I have co-slept with all 3 dc. Dd is 12 weeks old and we currently safely co-sleep this involves dh sleeps in the spare room, no duvet above waist height and so on. I will soon put the bedside cot up and start getting her used to that.

Despite this if I could put her in her own space I would. It's all well and good people advising of guidelines against co-sleeping but none of my babies have tolerated being put in their own space. Dd even fights going to sleep in a moving car. I turned to co-sleeping with ds1 out of desperation and with each baby found they also scream when put in a crib/pram/car seat/baby swing or bouncer. Dd even gets annoyed if I put her in a sling some days. Some babies need a lot of help getting to sleep.

I find the new guidelines over the top. I think they would achieve better safety by educating parents about safe co-sleeping than just saying 'don't'. When you haven't slept more than an hour at a time for weeks and no matter how many times you resettle the baby they still wake up, co-sleeping starts to look very appealing. Better safe co-sleeping than falling asleep on the sofa!

Grrr why is it that the things that make my baby happy and sleepy are never the recommended things? Dd slept SO much better once we started co-sleeping, and she always hated being put on her back.

Apparently one of the theories about SIDS is that babies sometimes fall in too deep a sleep, and just stop breathing. My own theory is that sleeping on their own, and sleeping on their backs, lowers the risk of SIDS because it makes babies uncomfortable. And therefore unlikely to sleep deeply, let alone too deeply.

That's my scientific, non-evidence-based opinion, and I'm sticking to it.

Great post cake and you have my sympathies regarding babies "not tolerating being put in their own space" - mine were pretty much like that too. It's all very well saying "put them in a cot in your room" - if only it were as simple as it sounds!

Isn't there a cultural element here too? I co-slept with both of my children, but did so safely.

The westernised bed is the problem, with its soft mattresses and duvets etc, not co-sleeping. Many cultures co-sleep and don't have these issues. I'd like to see some research on this aspect.

I believe that differentiating between the guidelines given for for example, breastfeeding, same room sleeping (for day and night sleeps), length of time in car seat, not putting baby to sleep in prone position etc, and co sleeping, is because all of the former have been statistically proven to either hugely benefit the baby, and/or cause baby to be at a statistically higher risk of SIDS for this reason alone, whereas because of the varied circumstances used in studies involving co sleeping (accidental, sofa, bed, smoker/non etc etc), the results of these studies have not reliably proved that it is the actual co sleeping alone which is the ultimate cause for the SIDS cases studied.

I'm not sure if I've conveyed properly what I meant to say, but hopefully the gist is there.

The advice in early - mid 2000s (when I had my children) was to use a new cot mattress with each child (can't remember exactly why though).

Do co-sleepers buy a new mattress for their bed with each new child? The cot mattresses have the airflow type topper too - again, not found in the normal mattress on a normally made-up adult bed.

Cot death was my biggest fear with my babies - even though I was driven mad with tiredness as they both had reflux, I still put them in their own bed (cot) - not an adult bed.

I believe that the advice re new mattresses was (or has changed to), only using a mattress for siblings, not one bought second hand that had been used by child(ren) unrelated to your own.

SIDS is the main killer of healthy babies.

Around 300 deaths a year is a lot. All external causes (accidents including cars and drowning murders etc) killed around 50 babies.

For cThere is no 5 year age range where more than 300 die in transport accidents.

In a BMJ study comparing sleep arrangements for SIDs victims and controls, the SIDS infants slept 16% Sofa 38% Bedshare 46% alone whereas the controls slept 0.5% Sofa 20.5% Bedshare 79% alone.

When I did the research I came to the conclusion that avoiding co-sleeping was the single biggest way to reduce risk for my daughter.

Another reason is that 1 glass of wine is enough to count as unsafe - the data compared consumption of 2+ units. Going teetotal for 2 years didn't appeal!

A lot of cot mattresses are made of cheap foam, not decently sprung with natural fibres, which I believe was part of the reason for advising a new one for each baby (worries about degrading foam giving off fumes of some kind)

I was very pfb about my cot mattress and bought a very expensive sprung one containing organic coconut fibres - I overheat very fast on any kind of foam, including mattress toppers, and didn't want my baby to - just as well I did buy it really as he was an extremely hot baby! (I hadn't had to buy anything else for him as had been given everything else by friends/family so this was my one expenditure). I saved this mattress, wrapped it well in tight sealed plastic and stored it until DS2 was born, when I checked it for any damage/mould/bad smells - none - so used it again. Except that DS2 barely slept in the cot ever, unlike DS1 who was in it from 6-18mo.