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

The rise in SIDS among co-sleeping babies is as far as can see, statistical. Back in the early 90s, we were encouraged to keep our babies to hand for at least the first 6 months, as most SIDS were among babies that slept in another room. Then the Back to Sleep campaign began and cot death numbers fell again. Mercifully there are far far fewer cot deaths now than at practically any other time in history thanks to better education of parents and carers. So the highest proportion of infants with unexplained death at the moment are those co-sleeping or sleeping with a parent on a sofa. The numbers are still very small compared to what they used to be, and falling all the time.

Brdgrl we can have nice things AND let people express themselves! I m a midwife in one of the top 2 deprived areas in Britain and for most of my clients it is normal to exclusively breastfeed and co-sleep yet here virtually everyone is telling em it's dangerous and wrong so they mix feed or formula feed instead of sleeping with their babies which we all know increases the risk of SIDS. They are also robbed of their mothering instincts which can result in PND and difficulty in bonding. Many are so poor they have no cot so put their babies on a cold floor to sleep cos doctors and midwives say that is safer! Makes me cross because we also have highest neonatal death rates too. So happy to have an 'official' recommendation to co-sleep for these reasons. Oh and also like to prompt that babies need comfort because many seem to forget that!

Oh and also why is this huge deal being made between 2 day old babies and older term babies? They are all these tiny dependent creatures who cannot speak so need to know they are safe and being responded to appropriately.

but you are a miwife treating this storyblurb in the Telegraph as an 'official' recommendation which it categorically is not!

and no one is preventing any one from expressing themselves, only pointing out when 'evidence' has been misinterpreted.

midwife, sorry

I m not treating it as an 'official' recommendation and won't necesarily be recommending it just happy there is another view out there that is endorsed by doctors. I don't rate doctors as experts in childcare but most of my clients do so I think it's helpful.

Catslikefelix - To reiterate, most of the research around Kangaroo Care, i.e more then this one study, (which I'm not even sure is Cochrane approved) involves premature babies, not term babies, so it is comparing babies in NNU vs babies in NNU having Kangaroo care NOT term babies, home with their parents.

Premie babies have different habituation processes, are more easily stressed etc then your nice, bonny term baby.

No one on here has condemned co-sleeping, just explained why it isn't for them. No one minded hearing about how people enjoyed co-sleeping. What people did mind is the statement by one poster that not co-sleeping was damaging their babies for life. I minded that and the attempts to twist research to support that theory, others did too. Not surprising really.

I agree that we should be more open about co-sleeping from a HPC point of view, there's whispers about it from the more breast-feeding related information sources, but nothing more concrete and official.

However, working in an (also deprived) area where there were several deaths relating to possibly incorrect co-sleeping*, I can understand why the back to sleep in a cot message is pushed, there are less variables to go wrong these days with cot sleeping. In more chaotic households, it's valuable to promote the message that your baby should have a safe place to sleep.

*I was on mat leave at the time, when the HV came, she actually asked to see where DD slept. Not sure what she would've done if I'd said no, but I can understand why she did it.

I've said it before on these debates and I'll say it again - the majority of infant deaths through co-sleeping are NOT SIDS. SIDS is unexplained infant death - co-sleeping deaths are usually due to being smothered, being crushed, and occasionally, falling out of the bed. These are not SIDS deaths and should not be included in the statistics (but are).

I suspect that back in the day many kids ended up sleeping more with siblings than with parents. A little kindle of kids under blankets nearby was probably a more accurate picture than 4 kids and parents in one sleeping spot.

Kids don't wake up when they're kicked or whacked by someone sleeping next to them. And they will ALWAYS wake up is the parents get amorous. What, you think parents should have to get out of the warm snuggly bed to make more kids? Kids can benefit the same from others breathing near by, who says it must be Mom's heart and lungs? Why not big sibs?

If this study is based on chest sleeping, doesn't that contradict the safe co-sleeping guidance which I vaguely recall say you shouldn't sleep yourself with your baby on you? (I may have that wrong!) Is chest sleeping common among co-sleepers? I don't think I could sleep that way unless I was truly zonked in which case it would surely be dangerous.

Seems like yet another example of really bad health reporting. Sad really as these articles are actually quite influential, even if it's just from relatives reading and pressurizing. I had my two on me for the first few days because I had a c-section and so getting up in the night was harder, but as soon as was possible they were in their own space, because whilst it may be lovely for the baby to sleep on my chest, the side effect was that I didn't sleep. I also think it's slightly amusing that the advice is don't have the baby in your bed if you are excessively tired. Isn't sleep deprivation pretty much a given for the first few months?

Whoever above said something about 'blind promotion of one style of parenting over another' is wrong. This study is merely a newspaper friendly sized bite, a taster, of Attachment Parenting which is a massive movement in itself.

Its like saying that the breast is best campaign is blindly promoting of one style of parenting over another. Its naturally the best thing to do if you are able but beating oneself up over the fact you didn't/couldn't/couldn't be arsed is frankly silly.

flamegirl it is confusing isn't it? I found the same - particularly with chest sleeping meaning baby was on it's stomach which I thought was another no-no.

I think baby sleeping on you is fine in a safe co-sleeping environment - bf mother (lighter sleep cycles), no duvet near baby, 1 pillow, mothers hair tied back etc. I think the warnings generally mean on sofas or comfy chairs.

The prone sleeping on mothers chest is fine too. I believe the theory is that the mothers breathing and movement of her chest stimulates the baby's breathing so isn't the same risk for SIDS as prone position in a cot.

Christ I must be the worst mother in the world then. DD was bottle fed at 2 weeks and in her own bedroom by 3 weeks!

She was such a noisy sleeper I couldn't sleep at all with her in the same room, let alone the same bed.

Co sleeping is normal. Putting a baby in its own room from birth is a western concept typical of affluent societies.

We are mammals. Our young are meant to be close to us during their vulnerable years to protect them from predators. Babies are instinctual creatures who are not able to rationalise why they sleeping alone. Unfortunaltey, intellect takes precedence over instinct in some adults who feel that they are creating a rod for their own backs if they co sleep or that their child will be 'wimpy' or needy if they bed share.

No one should be made to feel bad for co sleeping. It is normal behaviour.

I should add that DD is now 7 and spends part of most nights co-sleeping with us!

LeninGrad, Of course you don't get it, if you cosleep you never get that tired. :)

I had my first child in her own cot in her own room by 5 months and for the next 11 months I got out of my nice warm bed three/four times per night. Each time I had to get out of bed, walk out of our room into her room. Pick her up, sit on a cold chair and try not to drop her whilst nursing her for an hour or so until she went to sleep. Walked back to my bed, to try and get back to sleep before the next waking.

I was so tired I almost dropped her whilst feeding her a couple of times (didn't do) I was going to sleep at 6pm and tired all the time. We did cosleep sometimes but I believed all the crap about rod for backs etc and felt bad about bringing her into our bed.

With DS we coslept from day one and oh my, I had so much energy from the start. OK some tired days but even on the worse nights all I had to do was lift my top and helping him latch and then go back to sleep seconds later, no idea how many times, I did it on autopilot and slept blissfully.

Of course I coslept with DC3 from the start and again never got that tiredness most people associate with newborns.

Regular cosleeping equals loads of sleep. I think the tiredness argument is that a mother who does not normally cosleep and has not organized a safe bed sharing situation, who brings her baby to her bed just because she is so tired is not following the rules. It is far safer to cosleep all the time and never get that tired in the first place IYSWIM.

The worst nights sleeps of my life have been the handful of nights I've had the kids in with me (illness, whinging). The hospital made me co-sleep after my CS so I could feed DD easier, I was a wreck all 3 nights as I couldn't relax. As soon as we got home she was in the moses basket.

I can't sleep with anyone though, even having a partner in bed means I sleep badly. I need total sensory deprivation to relax.

Co-sleeping seems like a good idea if it works for you though. Whatever the parents prefer IMO.

So now mums who co-sleep don't get tired? Excuse me, but i call bullshit on that one! Sorry, but am sitting here thinking of my three sisters, all of whom have co-slept...and all of whom battled with sleep deprivation to various degrees. As I think many new mums of either practice have.

I didn't and don't co-sleep, which suits us well. My bf DD sleeps in her own cot, where she has slept from the time she came home. She is very regular; I put her down at 8 PM and she's up at 7:30 AM the next morning. That started at about 3 months. Until recently (and about 50% of the time now), she would wake and be nursed at around 1 AM.

Last night I nursed her at 1 AM. I took her back to her room, laid her down, worked her thumb out of the sleeve of her pajamas, where it had gone missing, and covered her with her light blanket. She stuck her thumb in her month, then pulled it out again,waved cheerily at me, and said "bye!". This is what putting my DD to bed in her cot is like. She is happy and healthy, and we can all sleep. I feel very lucky that it has worked out this way. Not smug, not convinced that my way is 'better', but lucky. This is the choice I made, and it is working for us. I didn't have sleep deprivation the way some of my friends and sisters have - but that's because I got lucky, not because of which sleeping method I chose!

Just my experience, yes, but wanted to post it as a counter to this "co-sleeping is the way to avoid tiredness" argument above.

What follows is ever-so-slightly facetious, but there does seem to be a movement in parenting at the moment towards a rejection of everything 'Western' and 'modern' as being wrong.

Personally I find this rather bizarre. Whilst I appreciate that humans are mammals and child-birth is probably the most animal experience you go through, the idea that every step we have made away from our caveman days is a retrograde one is quite extreme. People probably used to sleep together because it was cold - we now have central heating ;-)

Why is this society that we have spent so long building seen as so harmful? Clearly some things are, but if you reject the idea of a dummy as artificial, do you also shield your baby from all man made fabrics? Do you remove your baby from the room when the television is on?

I think if co-sleeping is your thing, then fine. And if cot-sleeping is your thing, then fine. But in the 1970s they were absolutely adamant that formula milk was better than breast milk. Every recommendation made or opinion given by any mother is only based on what they feel themselves, have read or have been told. And unless you are so supremely arrogant as to consider that you have the final answer then you can only ever make a judgement call that suits you.

"He found that the babies hearts were under up to three times more stress when they slept in a cot, rather than on the mother´s chest"
Sleeping on mother´s chest isn´t going to be practical for long, is it?

I think a lot of people have a baby next to them in the bedroom-doesn´t that also count as co sleeping?

Both of mine were such wrigglers I can only imagine that they would have been the only ones sleeping tbh!

But if one of them has wanted to sleep with a parent due to illness, that´s always been allowed, & one of us would sleep in the child´s bed.

My husband´s parents didn´t even allow that!!