Sharing bed with a newborn

[lamii]

Baby is 2.5 weeks. DH wants to share our bed with him and he puts him by his side. It really scares me, I believe that it's dangerous. He keeps insisting and I am terrible nights as we fight and I prepare all the bottles - I struggle breastfeeding and do it only daytime. I have seen baby rolling over and ending up the face between DHs back and the mattress. DH says that I lie.
Baby seems to fall asleep quicker when he is in our bed but he is also able to sleep in his cot by next to our bed-it just takes more time/effort.
Aibu to not want bed sharing with our baby?

Midwife should not be recommending co-sleeping!

What a ridiculous statement! Why not? Midwives absolutely SHOULD be discussing co-sleeping and how to do it safely so people can properly assess whether it’s an option for them. Accidental co-sleeping from exhaustion or desperation to settle baby is far, far more dangerous than properly planned co-sleeping. My (NHS) midwife showed me in the hospital and then again at home how to do it safely. Far better than me doing it without the proper info and advcie, as the OP’s partner is doing.

Yes this is actually up to date unicef and NICE guideline advice - to discuss safe co-sleeping rather than blanket advise against it. I was also encouraged to co-sleep in an NHS hospital 10 years ago! It's not totally unheard of.

But also UK regulations don't apply as the OP is abroad and different cultures have different views on co-sleeping and may have different norms WRT bedding for example.

And bottles have been commonplace for about 150 years! So I'm not sure how old your mother's cousin is, NewYear. In any case if it was a long time ago you have no idea of the circumstances, it was likely related to other factors then feeding method, they didn't have safe co-sleeping guidelines or bedside cots until very recently.

But you misunderstood my point, there is a difference between a midwife discussing it and suggesting or recommending it!

Why shouldn’t they be suggesting or recommending it, Different? It’s a
completely safe and healthy practice when done within guidelines. Probably safer in some cases than people trotting home with their newborns and placing them in cribs with bumpers, sleep positioned etc, which people do. Where your baby is going to sleep is a definite conversation to be had and safe bed sharing is a valid suggestion. You’re scaremongering.

Sleep positioners, rather

Japan has a very low SIDS rate and they mostly bed share. Please don't comment saying it's dangerous in all circa as you have no idea what you're talking about.

You can bad share safely. You just need to follow the guidelines carefully. In some situations a formula feeding mum is better off bed sharing. Much safer than, for instance, falling asleep with baby in arms because of exhaustion.

There's lots of great info about bed sharing on ISIS online

My baby is 9months. If he is in my bed he is NEVER next to dh.

It’s was hot when he was a newborn so I didn’t need a duvet but she slept in spare room. I was and am bf.

I also sleep further down the bed sonany covers don’t go near him and sleep in an l shape around him.

Your dh is being dangerous and vvv unreasonable

Ds just slept in a crib next to the bed for the first 6 months. Have you considered a Chico next to me style crib where it attached to bed with the side down?

it’s *

I was quite paranoid about this with my DCs. i always tried to put them in the cot when they were babies but on a few occasions I fell asleep with them on me or next to me after beast feeding. On one of those occasions I woke up and couldn't find dc. He was under the duvet a little bit down the bed. I'm fairly sure if I'd not woken up something might have happened to him - something perhaps fatal. It terrifies me. If you re going to co sleep you need to do it safely - but the advice I was always given was don't don it at all

This is one one of those things where the NHS gives out such ridiculously over risk averse guidelines that they have the opposite effect to that desired because they’re so obviously over cautious they just end up being ignored. See also alcohol guidelines.

One of my twins coslept with his father, the other one with me. The worst effect on that baby was that he woke up smelling of his fathers sweat, poor lamb.

I don’t think the problem is that babies shouldn’t be near men, just they are safer with someone actively participating in the feeding process as they are less deeply asleep. In our case DH did all the night feeds for one baby, so it wasn’t an issue.

How does that they're eating change the safety level. You're obviously gonna pick them up to give the bottle. I don't even have a side sleeper and never had an issue

I bedshared with all of mine to some degree or other (with the last two pretty much exclusively) and I used a bedside cot so the option was there for them to go into it and I never, ever put them between dh and me - they were always between me and the bedside cot. And I bf, including at night until they were pretty much 2 (or over, in the case of dc3 ), and observationally it really does make a difference. I was/am very in sync with them and would wake almost before they did. I never had any sense of unsafety, I think precisely because I was so aware. But your own sleeping patterns are different if you are not bf and tbh I would not have bed shared as a formula feeder. Your dh IBU.

It's to do with depth of sleep/hormones Doh. Link up thread.

I never bed shared with any of my three children because I liked my own space and also it wasn't such a 'thing' then as it is now I am aware that bed sharing has always happened and is considered the norm in some cultures, before anyone points that out
What I don't understand is why bed sharing is so revered on MN, despite the pretty obvious potential dangers, yet every time I suggest putting a baby to sleep in its own room, I am virtually accused of child abuse because of the potential SIDS dangers.
Both have potential risks, but for some reason, the risks involved in bed sharing are inevitably brushed aside and accusations of scaremongering appear, as we have seen on this thread.
I can't think of any other aspect of baby care where potential risks are dismissed so readily. Can anyone else?

Breastfeeding mothers tend to have the baby at breast level and often skin to skin, which is the biggest difference. For formula feeding this wouldn't necessarily occur. But you can make it as safe by following the suggested guidelines and mimicking the breastfeeding behaviour which is side/back sleeping with parent on the side facing the baby, one arm up to guard pillow, one leg bent to prevent rolling and stop baby wriggling down, duvet at waist level if you have one at all, preferably replace with blanket, skin to skin if you can. You do not tend to pick them up to breastfeed because the benefit of co-sleeping is that you can do it while lying down and dozing so it's not at all the same. (I think feeding a baby a bottle while they're flat on their back is also a choking risk isn't it? And you can't fall asleep while doing so in case you drop the bottle on their face.)

That’s actually a good point @cath... I don’t know why putting children in their own rooms is considered worse than bed sharing, (which I would probably say it is).

I don’t do either fwiw, as my dcs quite like their own beds too and I had no problems sharing a room with dc1 till she was 6 months +. I plan to do the same with dc2 who is currently just 2mo.

A friend of mine had her dcs in their own rooms from day 3 for dc1, day 1 for dc2. They were in America though and I wonder if things are different there? She swore by it. No baby monitor or anything either. She highly recommended I do the same, but I wasn’t comfortable and anyway, I quite like having the babies in my room.

Sorry - assuming you meant putting babies in their own rooms before 6 months there^^.

I breast fed but didn’t co sleep as was too scared baby would have got crushed between me dh and not to mention the danger of our 13 tog duvet and inappropriate bedding such as pillows etc (it was winter time.) DS slept next to my bed in his crib. I believe this is the safest way and I was so exhausted and sleep deprived I wouldn’t have trusted myself for not falling asleep too deeply.

I take the view that safe bed sharing is far better than the risk of exhausted parents accidentally falling asleep on sofas instead. That is a much higher risk.

We decided to bed share with my firstborn as a last resort because he was not comfortable and would not settle (reflux) in his moses basket. I read up and made sure we did it safely and never looked back. I didn't hesitate to do the same with our second during the first three months. As soon as they were ready I began settling them in their crib instead.

There is a lot of scaremongering about bed sharing, but as others have said there are other cultures where this is commonplace and SIDS deaths are actually lower.

www.nct.org.uk/parenting/co-sleeping-safely-your-baby

It depends who you talk to, I suppose? You get the same thing with formula preparation. You shouldn't do it in advance but in reality it's impractical never to, so there are ways to reduce the risks of this.

Personally I'm okay with the risks of bedsharing because they can be mitigated, whereas the risk of something like front sleeping or own room sleeping (when very small) is a binary thing, you either do it or you don't, there's nothing there to adjust. There have been no studies which showed that SAFE bedsharing carries any more risk than cot sleeping - only that bedsharing is many times more complicated and that there are many more things which can go wrong. Unfortunately there are also no studies which show conclusively that it is as safe but since this is down to the low number of SIDS cases today I can't get too upset about that as it's a good thing! Heaven forbid that more babies should die just so we can get some better stats, that would be terrible.

I agree that bedsharing should not be widely and simply recommended because there are too many risk factors, but in the context of a discussion such as a one to one with a midwife, or a wider one on a discussion forum, I think there's absolutely space to explore the differences, the risks, ways to reduce them and so on.

Yes, mine were in their own rooms virtually from birth, Darren. It worked for us, and all three were sleeping through (6pm-7am) by three months max.
It seemed pretty obvious to me that no-one was going to sleep as well in the same room, but I know this is very much the norm now.