Why do people question medical stuff?

[QueenPaw]

Post on FB I know from midwives saying basically "these sleep positioned/nest things are dangerous and increase SIDS risk, don't use"

Replies
< tags friend > "these look good, should get one for Baby X"
NICU use them, they can't be that dangerous (because obviously a hospital with monitoring is the same as home)
Shouldn't sell them if they're that dangerous
I used one and my baby is fine, got to make your own choices
Nothing wrong with them, you do you hun
Then a load of laughing emojis at anyone who rightly points out all the evidence and links to it with "here come the mum police"

I'm just WTF at it. Like the midwife is actively saying these are DANGEROUS and they're all ah well, my baby, and they're fine

I don’t think wanting my baby to be well rested is being selfish, to be honest.

They shouldn’t be allowed to be sold. Even the box on the Tommy’s one says must be used under supervision. Nobody is going to supervise their baby all night.

@MadeOfStarStuff

People don’t like think they’ve put their child at risk so they make out like choosing to ignore medical guidance is as valid a choice as following it.

Nicely put

@Scepticalch3rry

Because they're ignorant.

When it comes to parenting it brings a lot of guilt and shame, especially to those who are more likely to fall into the trap of all the co-sleeping, cot bumper loving groups.

I agree with a previous poster that people are selfish, none of the decisions to put a child in an unsafe situation are for their own good, only for the good of the parent, so the parent can rest, so the parent doesn't have to watch them as closely, so the parent can get more sleep.

Also for many of these issues people are still under the illusion that 'mother' knows best, that it's somehow up for debate the actual facts of the situation and risks involved. There is no such thing as safe co-sleeping, no matter if you follow all the guidelines a child will never be safer sleeping with you than in a cot (in the same room up until 6 months) with their feet at the bottom and a tight fitting sheet up to their armpits. However many who do co-sleep feel the need to assert they know better than the evidence and facts around the issue.

As we have seen with COVID many people aren't mentally up for the task of weighing up risk and understanding science, same applies here. Yes everything we do has some risk, even formula feeding, but to sit there and say you've weighed up the risks and decided to co-sleep or use a cot bumper is just stupid.

I did alot of research into this before I made the decision to co sleep. Please enlighten me with the peer reviewed paper that shows that safe co sleeping is more dangerous than sleeping in a cot.

Also calling a parent selfish for needing sleep is absolutely disgusting. A tired parent is far more likely to fall asleep on the sofa with a baby in their arms thereby putting the child at risk. Also as a previous poster said sleep deprivation drastically increases the risk of PND which has a detrimental effect on the entire family unit including the baby.

Below is a UNICEF statement on sids in the UK. They also estimate that approx 22% of babies are cosleeping in the UK on any given night.
around half of SIDS babies die while sleeping in a cot or Moses basket.
■ around half of SIDS babies die while co-sleeping. However, 90% of these babies
died in hazardous situations which are largely preventable.

One could hypothesis from the available data that with the removal of the dangerous elements of co sleeping a child is less likely to suffer sids in a co sleeping environment. Of course there are no statistics to show this so would nearly be an observation.

Medical advice doesn’t change all the time. It changes when more studies are carried out and evidence becomes available which help support parents make the right choices to keep their baby safe as safe as possible.

@Scepticalch3rry

I co-slept, because my baby would not (simply would not) sleep without me. I was so soul breakingly tired that I fell asleep holding her, that I fell down the stairs (thankfully not holding her) because I couldn't see properly, and I that I genuinely forgot to eat because my mind was becoming distorted.

I followed all the tips I could possibly find (including from HVs) about her to get her to sleep on her own. But she didn't so we co slept.

Genuine question - what would you have done in my situation to avoid 'selfishly' cosleeping?

It’s because nobody wants to confront the fact they’re putting their own child at risk through their own selfish choices.

So they try to justify it with laughing emojis and ridiculous claims/questions.

I followed most of the ‘rules’ with mine when they were newborn but I’m in no way confident that what was best practice when mine were young will be best practice when mine have kids. The scientific evidence we were presented with on which best practice decisions were made will likely be dispelled in the future and some new evidence and practice will swoop in. Same with everything else medicine related, has always been like this and will always be like this. I can’t hand in heart say everything I do now (according to current evidence) will prove to be the best option if someone turns over something new. Not talking about new discoveries as that’s obvious but often it turns out the dosages were were told were correct, treatment regimes etc turn out to be substandard many years in the future and we should have been using different dosages or treatment regimes for those particular medicines. It didn’t make us ‘right’ at the time, just no one had bothered with all the evidence at the time as Rome is not built in a day or people ‘think’ it’s working ok and no or limited impetus to explore further until someone gets hard up for research ideas one day.

Its good for people to question and challenge

Ah this should be interesting @Aimee1987

Since you were the one to bring up peer reviewed research, care to share the peer reviewed research that shows safe co-sleeping is safer than the recommended sleep guidance?

You're aware it's recommended for a reason right? or do you think the NHS, lullaby trust, laleche and NCT recommend it for no reason at all?

If you choose to go against guidance to keep your baby alive and safe, that makes you selfish and ignorant. A pretty simple concept tbh.

[quote Zarinea]@Scepticalch3rry

I co-slept, because my baby would not (simply would not) sleep without me. I was so soul breakingly tired that I fell asleep holding her, that I fell down the stairs (thankfully not holding her) because I couldn't see properly, and I that I genuinely forgot to eat because my mind was becoming distorted.

I followed all the tips I could possibly find (including from HVs) about her to get her to sleep on her own. But she didn't so we co slept.

Genuine question - what would you have done in my situation to avoid 'selfishly' cosleeping? [/quote]
So by your own words it was a selfish choice, you were forgetting to eat, you were tired, you nearly fell down the stairs.

Many selfish choices are understandable, it doesn't make them any less selfish though.

I'm selfish all the time, many people are. But to pretend putting a child in an unsafe sleeping situation or any situation for your own needs, isn't selfish is a bit silly.

If we had have stuck with medical advice, we would all be formula feeding our babies every four hours and leaving them to cry (outside) while we got back to servicing the men and our houses. Many would die, but it would be considered collateral damage. There's been lots of cases were Mother's instinct has changed medical advice because our lack of willingness has prompted research. There is safe co-sleeping and co-sleeping has benefits. A lot of the babies that die because their parents were drunk/drugged up in the bed, would be in as much danger if they were put in a cot and the parent tried to lift them out. Falling asleep pissed isn't co-sleeping and as said, compare the numbers to baby deaths in chairs/couches because of exhaustion and you see that co-sleeping is a better solution.

@Scepticalch3rry I was quoting you saying it was selfing.

I don't think it was selfish - I can't safely look after a baby on no sleep for months (could you?).

Back to my question - what would you have done?

@emilyfrost in what way is using a nest selfish? If the baby won’t settle without it, what do you propose parents do? Stay up all night and just live without sleep? Inevitably they will fall asleep holding the baby.

It wasn’t selfish Zarinea, it was sensible.

[quote Hadenough21]@emilyfrost in what way is using a nest selfish? If the baby won’t settle without it, what do you propose parents do? Stay up all night and just live without sleep? Inevitably they will fall asleep holding the baby.[/quote]
I don’t think there have been any reported SIDS from using a Purflo or Sleepyhead.

@Scepticalch3rry, sleep is a human need. You have to be able to function to look after a baby, so you find solutions. As is often said, guidance is great but babies don't read the guidance. Across all of your posts on every thread there's a deliberate lack of empathy and understanding, I hope you aren't a real person who has children and are just game playing.

@An0n0n0n

Putting my hard hat on....

People only seem to care about evidence for some things. Most people will loudly decry bumpers and front sleeping and co sleeping because of evidence BUT they promote formula feeding when there is evidence if risks to formula feeding - but that is promoted as a choice.

What I'm saying is that I don't like people choosing which evidence they like to promote a choice that they are biased towards.

Similarly, lots of people who are all for following WHO guidance on breastfeeding cheerfully ignore WHO guidance on weaning (ie start them on purées)

[quote Ponoka7]@Scepticalch3rry, sleep is a human need. You have to be able to function to look after a baby, so you find solutions. As is often said, guidance is great but babies don't read the guidance. Across all of your posts on every thread there's a deliberate lack of empathy and understanding, I hope you aren't a real person who has children and are just game playing.[/quote]
I must admit I’ve noticed the same.

There’s robust disagreement and there’s being as offensive and rude as possible.

Thanks@daffodilsandprimroses - I know it wasn't, just fed up of being told that I don't care about my baby. It's immensely unpleasant.

A lot of the reporting around sleep nests/pods has been patchy at best. There was a lot in the press about 4 years ago, after I had been using a Sleepyhead with DC1. Some specific brands were mentioned and it was reported that John Lewis had stopped selling these dangerous items. At no point did they stop selling the sleepyhead and I could not find that brand mentioned in any article (unlike others, and i looked a lot at the time). Are we supposed to conclude from that that sleepyhead is in fact a safe one?

I didn’t use it for DC2 just in case.

We had a sleepyhead (it’s now called a Dockatot) for ds but then I read something that they weren’t endorsed by the lullaby trust and I bought him a Purflo. OH was a bit eye rolly but as I said to him, if something DID happen to ds I’d never forgive myself! To be honest I can’t really see the difference but then ds has multiples of everything else to try and get me five minutes peace so why not pods!

@Scepticalch3rry

Ah this should be interesting *@Aimee1987*

Since you were the one to bring up peer reviewed research, care to share the peer reviewed research that shows safe co-sleeping is safer than the recommended sleep guidance?

You're aware it's recommended for a reason right? or do you think the NHS, lullaby trust, laleche and NCT recommend it for no reason at all?

If you choose to go against guidance to keep your baby alive and safe, that makes you selfish and ignorant. A pretty simple concept tbh.

This is the kind of thing I would have posted when I was pregnant with my first and Knew Everything

www.madeformums.com/baby/are-baby-sleeping-pods-and-nests-safe/

This is an interesting read that looks at the Lullaby trust evidence. Sorry I don’t know how to do a clicky link but here are a few interesting paragraphs:

“Some products marketed for infant sleep, such as hammocks and nests or pods, are not firm and flat and so are not recommended for use by The Lullaby Trust, although their relationship to SIDS has not yet been established“

So no established relationship to SIDs, they are just not firm and flat.

“As of 2020, we haven’t been able to find any evidence of reported cases across the world of babies’ deaths specifically involving a sleeping pod or nest used outside of a parent’s bed. We found 7 non-UK cases where a baby had died while co-sleeping in their parents’ bed when sleeping in a pod or nest. Medical reports suggested the deaths were linked to bed sharing rather than the nest itself”

Others may have found contradictory evidence but this is saying that the only reason the Lullaby Trust deem them unsafe is because they are not in line with their firm and flat guidance, and not because of a specific link to infant deaths.

So it’s easy to see why based on this parents might be happy to use them.

@scepticalch3rry
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25238618/
The Blair study in 2014 found no increased risk of bed sharing when risk factors are excluded.
NICE guidelines ( where the NHS take the majority of their guidelines from) dont discourage it but highlight the importance of families knowing the dangers
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg37/evidence/cg37-postnatal-care-full-guideline-addendum2&ved=2ahUKEwionb79u-7vAhVUe8AKHRFeBs8QFjABegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw2Tv7qyCz3gY-OsvnQtNz_2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg37/evidence/cg37-postnatal-care-full-guideline-addendum2&ved=2ahUKEwionb79u-7vAhVUe8AKHRFeBs8QFjABegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw2Tv7qyCz3gY-OsvnQtNz_2
To my knowledge there are no papers which show it's dangerous once you remove the other risk factors but if you happen to k ow of one I would live to read it.

There ii a study that highlights the increased uptake of breastfeeding in cosleeping cohorts such as this recent study in Sweden.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33314307/
There is a link between decreased sids risk and breastfeeding with this study finding that it halfed.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29084835/
The swedish study highlights an increase in co sleeping but were not seeing an increase in rates of sids in the last decade.

As others have said science is constantly changing and updating so sometimes it takes time for these studies to be reflected in general guidelines but I think that the UK and NHS are heading that way.

Also midwives are advised to follow NICE guidelines in terms of sleeping and therefore highlight the risks so families know how to stay safe.