Infant sofa deaths.

[SnowmAngeliz]

DP rang me today to tell me about this and i've just found it here .
I am reading 3 in a bed at the moment as i seem to have fallen into co-sleeping with dd alot (10 months). I find her book fascinating and then i heard this and it makes me fel guilty all over again. I've just heard a Doctor on The Wright stuff say that as Mother have been told for ages not to co-sleep they get up and feed their babies on the sofa and then fall asleep and that's worse!
So, does anyone else co-sleep happily?

Also, if there are 300 cot deaths a year and 135 of those last year were due to co-sleeping, couldn't that just be chance? (I'm not talking about the sofa thing there as i think i've always known the sofa is very dangerous for babies to sleep on)

if 135 die in the parent bed, thats means a higher % die in their cots/cribs doesnt it?

DD2 doesn't settle unless she's in bed next to her mummy. I lay on one side w/my duvet and she on the other in her grobag.

If DH has her overnight, however, he puts her in her Moses basket right next to him.

I think we should consider how many people do not or have not co-slept at all. I would guess that most people have done for at least part of the night for some period of time.

DD coslept with us for the first 16 months, on and off at times as she also had a bedside cot. If you cosleep according to all the rules, and follow the normal reducing cot death rules too, then cosleeping is safe. It is when people don't follow those rules - smoking, drinking, on medication, under duvet, etc that the risks of cosleeping are dangerous surely?

misdee - that must be right yes. Those stats suggest that of those children who sadly die of cot death 45% are cosleeping and 55% are in their own cot/crib.

What is it about sofas that is bad? I know not to fall asleep with the baby on a sofa for suffocation reasons, but can the baby sleep on a sofa alone? DS has daytime naps on a sofa - the sofa is tightly covered with a bedspread so there are no gaps to fall down, and he sleeps wrapped in a blanket. Do you think this is OK? (It being daytime, I'm awake and checking on him too...)

I think each to their own on this one - but one thing occurred to me when I considered the option of co-sleeping; if my child god forbid, died in their cot, then I would know that I had done all I could to keep them safe and that it was just a terrible chance. However if I was co-sleeping with my child then I would blame myself for their death for the rest of my days and that I could NOT live with.
That's just how I saw things.
Isn't it incredible how the numbers of cot deaths have come down since the 80's when the 'powers that be' told us to sleep babies on their fronts? who came up with that?? It always strikes me as so tragic that so many lives were obviously lost to this advice!

It was on the radio this morning that the problem with sleeping with a parent on the sofa is that the baby is often between the back of the sofa and the parent who acts like a radiator so that the baby has a high tendency to get overheated.

Hula - I don't think your 45%/55% figure is quite right because it doesn't take into account these sofa deaths. Also you have to consider how many babies co-sleep and how many sleep alone. I suspect that the majority of babies end up doing a bit of both somewhere on a continuum. I would never consider myself a co-sleeper but both my children have spent time in our bed.

I co-sleep - have done so with my 4 kids. Co-sleeep with ds at the mo who is 4 months. co-sleeping helps bf as can bf on demand & get some rest.
The unicef babyfriendly website has an excellent leaflet on co-sleeping safely.

It was only a basic calculation Bozza. Just highlighting really that the stats they quote don't really mean much.

There is such a world of difference between co-sleeping PROPERLY than sleeping on a sofa with a baby.

Oh yes I agree Hula. Nothing wrong with co-sleeping properly although I was never a fan. Still have DD in with me if she is poorly and DH goes on the settee but she is a pest.

I co-slept with DD for 9 months constantly and on and off for 15 months.

What about countries where co-sleeping is the norm? An indian doctor told me that in India cots are almost unheard of yet they have very low rates of cot death. I wonder what the statistics are for these countries?

the thing about co-sleep and cot death is heat, so like Hula say if you do it right and keep baby at the same temp they would be at in their cot then the risk is minimised. Unfourtuneatly one of the things about cot death is there is no actual cause, factors which can contribute but no one thing is to blame.

i have co-slept with both of mine, still am with dd2, and will continue to do so

I know Sweetkitty, it is baffling, esp as a lot of India is v hot for at least part of the year - how do they stop babies overheating in e.g. tropical areas where the nights are v warm?

that article said that up to 86% of all cot deaths are now in smoking households. it annoys me when 'professionals' claim co sleeping is not safe per se when actually it can be safer than a cot if certain precautions are followed. The mother tends to sleep more lightly and may wake if baby falls into a too deep sleep, thus prompting the baby to breathe regularly again. And of course helps breastfeeding issue.

sounds like a really stupid doctor on the wright show but then i didn't see it...

I think the prob with sofas is a) squashy cushions b) high back.

Trouble is it is so easy to nod off on one and for the baby to get sqeezed between the feeder and the cushions.

i'm alluding to co sleeping in bed of course, bad idea to co sleep on sofa.

Message withdrawn

Sweetkitty, I was always puzzled by this too and I asked and was told that to establish cot death, there has to be a post mortem examination, with all other possibilities ruled out before SIDS can be established. Well, in many countries (often poorer), if A baby dies then it may well be attributed to many things other than SIDS, so it is an unfair comparison to make between India or developing countries and here.

Secondly, one of the factors currently being considered is the chemicals that are currently put into mattresses in the west. This is for both Cot mattresses and Bed mattresses. Again, if bed mattresses in other countries a4re made from an entirely different material, then the risk may well be reduced. This is by no means proven, but is a line of thought!

hold on though
saying 135 deaths happened n the parental bed is NOT the same as saying they weer DUE to co-sleeping is it? ptherwise you could say that the rest were DUE to being in the cot?
oftent he cause is not known, that's the thing about the SIDS diagnosis

I do know of a family whose baby died whilst sleeping alone on the sofa. They called it cot death, & I think he was 12-15 months old, so they were just terribly unfortunate.

I co-slept with both my children, it was the only way to keep sane.

Agree with Hulababy's comments on following the rules. (With DD, now 15, we were told she HAD to sleep on front, NEVER back.... then the rules had changed by time DS was born to ONLY sleeping on back. We just had to go with the current advice)

ggglimpopo - the mothers whose babies died sleeping on the sofa, was it definitely attributable to the fact that they fell asleep on the sofa together? Was it actually still "cot death" or straightforward asphyxiation? Were the babies accidentally smothered...or did they die of cot death, with the usual lack or provable causes, and it was assumed that it was to do with falling asleep on the sofa with their mothers?

beasmum - I think I would feel like that too.

exactly HC - there always seems to be a bias against co sleeping in the press even though those figures don't suggest it.

I co-slept with both of mine, it was the only way they would go to sleep when they were new borns.

However I slept with them on a very firm futon, on the floor and was covered with the right number of sheets and blankets for the temp of the room.