Babies 'should sleep in mother's bed until age three' (Telegraph)

[Teaandcakeplease]

Admittedly its the Torygraph but what do you ladies make of this? Interesting.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8854674/Babies-should-sleep-in-mothers-bed-until-age-three.html

Another bloody man telling women how to look after their babies!. It's a wonder the human race has survived, what with all those mothers just doing what feels right to them.

If you want to co-sleep, fine. If it doesn't work for you (and I couldn't bear to share my precious sleep with a wriggling, kicking, puking baby), also fine.

Having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one's achievements. self-satisfied - complacent - conceited.

I don't feel smug, and hope I don't come across as smug. Happy, yes. Smug, no. Pleased I am getting sleep, yes. Proud/conceited? No.

Although DD wasn't actually in bed with us she was in the same room until she was three. Does that count?

I don't think co-sleeping is wrong BTW, it just isn't for me. I just can't sleep at all if I am snuggled up to someone, not even OH. We have a king sized bed and when we want to go to sleep we turn our backs on each other. When I want to sleep I want to sleep not be interfered with.

if this article makes co-sleeping mums feel happier about the choice they've already made anyway, great. :)

if this article makes any non-co-sleeping mums question the choice they've already made anyway (unlikely), they should probably give themselves a bit of a slap as it is hardly an exhaustive or definitive piece of research/journalism.

if this article is being used by mums to actually make a choice about co-sleeping or cot-sleeping, they should probably stop reading it and go somewhere else for information.

'I'm finally doing something right'

yes, me too

mine both co slept till , well 5 with ds1, now 4 with ds2 and still in with me.

I like this chap, he invented kangaroo care. He's clever.

Mind you I don't think it's necessary to co sleep longer than you feel comfortable with. I just hated being told it was wrong to do it while I DID still feel comfortable with it. People kept saying it was wrong,. so I'm glad this fellow is saying it's Ok.

Boo sucks to you, mother.

It's not really that odd. The benefits of skin to skin in regulating the baby's temperature and heart rate are well documented and it's used in hospitals all over the world with premies. Why would that benefit stop? And we know the vast majority of babies and toddlers would not choose to sleep away from their parents if they had the option.

Whether you want to do it or not is up to you.

Show, one such country is Japan, I believe. It has the lowest rate of SIDS, I think, in the world and co-sleeping is normal, up until at least age 7, if not longer.

Oo, JaneBirkin, is he the same man? Kangaroo care is brilliant, I think. Love this example in particular (yes it's the DM, it's the first one that came up on Google)

Yay ! If there was a little "doing a dance" icon I would be doing it.

Well it sounds all very lovely, but what happens if your baby (6m to 1yr old) thinks it's the Best Thing Ever to have mum and dad in the bed and wants to play, which means climbing on your head and putting his fingers in your mouth and rolling around giggling for hours and not sleeping a wink. Did it once out of desperation, never again. Well done, smug co-sleepers around the world. I wish you lots of luck with that if you ever have a baby like mine (who I would not change for the world, by the way).

We tried though in the early days. We had a co-sleeper by the side of the bed for the first five months before our DS went into his nursery. I lasted ONE HOUR the first night before going into the spare room where I have slept ever since, leaving DH to sleep in the room with the baby. It was like sleeping next to a herd of farm animals!

He studied hardly any babies for hardly any time. Why is this all over the media? it was on breakfast tv too.
Very lazy journalism. And bad science too.

"Well done, smug co-sleepers around the world"

Take that chip off your shoulder, it must be weighing you down

Co-sleeping fine if it works for you. Associated smugness and being self-congratulatory about something that works only by happy accident is really irritating (goes for any parenting choice really).

I felt guilty about co sleeping and my mum used to say I'd never get them out of the bed etc. I wish I'd done things differently now in retrospect I moved them into cots quite early. I'm enjoying the discussions on here and glad I began the thread.

Co-sleeping a toddler is fine so long as they don't sleep diagonally across the bed; or pull your hair in the night; or wake you up by sitting on your head with a full nappy; or flailing about with random arm and leg twitches; or growing big enough to kick DH in the nuts while he is asleep.

Other than that, sharing a bed with a toddler is an absolute pleasure - I will miss him when he finally decides to sleep in his own bed. (Truly ).

The thing is, there have been many different studies of baby sleeping arrangements, conducted in various different ways, and with variable quality of evidence, and often measuring different outcomes. There's nothing much to be gained by taking one such set of results in isolation, that isn't really how science works. You have to look at the sum of what we know, and with what level of confidence we 'know' it.

I know most members of the public don't have access to the literature, or indeed the time to trawl through it, but it does seem a bit irresponsible of the press to write things like this (which some people will take as reliable practical advice) without putting it in the proper context. And it adds to the public perception of 'Scientists/Experts Always Changing Their Minds, You Just Don't Know What To Believe'.

Lizzy, perhaps we're happy about this because finally someone has said co sleeping is a good thing, and for so long it's been the object of derision. I'm fed up with being called a lentil weaver because I co sleep. Or a hippy, or a bad parent.

For once it's nice to have something to back up what I wanted to do with my kids.

This is very interesting. As someone who co-sleeps with a nearly 4yo but formula fed, I now am getting a little taste of what it's like to be breastfeeder when us ffs get defensive

Yes but the someone saying it is a good thing has not conducted a proper study. There have always been people talking about the benefits of co sleeping. This guy is no different from any of the rest of them.

I personally don't understand why people make such a big deal out of where exactly other people's children sleep. Why does it really matter? If it isn't your kid then it isn't your business.

If people want to co-sleep then let them get on with it. If they want to use a cot, let them get on with it. Why is there so much of a value judgement about this stuff?

Hmmmm I am glad for the co-sleepers as people in RL can be judgy as anything about it. Agree about the smugness from some people on MN who co-sleep though. I would have done it if DD had been a nightmare non sleeper but i think it may have killed me as I can't even sleep when she is the same room as me. I am light sleeper and she is a noisy piglet, we wake each other up. I think in my case a year on the exhaustion would have probabaly killed me and that would surely negate any benefits for poor little motherless DD and DS.

Could you co-sleepers each tell me whether you started co-sleeping as a choice you made during pregnancy or whatever or just bgecause it was the only way you could get any sleep? (both perfectly valid IMO). I will then compare your answers on my smugness/judgyness spreadsheet compiled from this and other threads and see if there is a corrleation [hgrin]

I am not aware of any health risks of using a cot. Are there any actual scientific studies about this? The majority of babies sleep in a cot, as per the NHS advice.
People need to be made aware of actual proven advice. Other than that it is a free choice. It doesn't make you a worse parent if co-sleeping doesn't work for you or you don't want to try it. It also won't damage the long term health of your child if they sleep in a cot.

Well it used to be the official WHO advice based on the idea that a mothers heartbeat helps to regulate their babies heart beat. I have always been sceptical about stories of mothers squashing their babies. I think alcohol or drugs are involved in those scenarios. When you have your newborn baby next to you in the bed you simply don't sleep as deeply as you do if you don't. It's like something in your brain switches on. The problem is getting it to switch off!

But parents do get too much conflicting advice thrown at them, and you have to examine the evidence for yourself and take it or leave it.