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)

I co-slept with all of mine, still have one in my bed and all are healthy and fine. You have to read between the lines on those studies. The parents who have actually smothered their children often were under the influence of drugs, alcohol. I never even take a cough syrup with a baby in my bed because I only want a natural sleep not a deep drug induced one. But if one exercises common sense, it's fine. Also, when I lay with my babies, and they instinctively move and cuddle in, I just know this is how it was meant to be for me.

this co-sleeping debate baffles me... for crenturies people co-slept with with their entire families as that was the way of life. the humanrace has survived but fashions and lifestyles have changed. I have a one-bed flat and a 17 month old he sleeps in a cot with its side down next to our bed and drifts between the two throughout the night. I would not have survived night breastfeeding without having him in bed with us at least part of the time and think co-sleeping is the most natural thing in the world (i do not smoke and if i had a couple of drinks I would make sure he was in his cot).

Yes for thousands of years humans have co-slept on bed rolls, straw mattresses, animals furs etc - all really firm sleeping areas. They were not squishy, heat retaining mattresses with a duvet on top. Also for thousands of years infant mortality has been absurdly high and is lower now than it has probably ever been. So on the one hand, yes humans have always co-slept but on the other we ever better empirical evidence than ever before on how to keep our babies safer.

Understand your point - and yes we do have much lower infant mortatlity rates now but I bet if you look at the socio-economic data on sids it will reveal what has always killed babies - poverty - poor diet, poor housing and poor health. I know I am in a fortunate position and I understand the risks/ benefits of my parenting choices that is all you can do.

i get quite cross at the mixed information mothers receive about co sleeping. because i didn't want to co sleep with my baby the night he was born by c section [only because i thought it wasn't safe] he was taken from me and given donated breast milk without my consent. Later i used to get up to breast feed him in the middle of then night, exhausted, until one night when he was three months i feel asleep and he rolled off the couch. Both these incidents could have been avoided if i had co slept, as we have done since he was three months old. I don;t smoke, drink or take drugs. We both now get a decent night's sleep. Shame the info about safe co sleeping wasn't given to me by a midwife or HV, i had to go looking for it. Make me cross.

I think the sofa thing is all about accidents, too. Cosleeping on purpose is an entirely different thing.

We too have an extremely hard bed, which I think makes co-sleeping safer. I have had the boys under the duvet, but I just always made sure they were wearing very little clothing.

We also had no other risk for cot death (no smoking, no preemie, both breastfed), and I know I'm a reasonably light sleeper.

My niece very nearly died at 3 months old because she fell off the sofa and consequentially suffered subdural haematomas. Her father had fallen asleep .

Should add, I'm absolutely 'pro' co-sleeping. I did with mine and my sister did with my niece with no problems at all. Sofas and sleeping babies/adults are bad news, IME.

When I told my midwives I was co-sleeping, each time they said they felt it safer than possibly falling asleep mid breastfeed on a couch/chair, safer by far.

I'm sure I saw something on the news recently about dummies dramatically cutting the chances of cot deaths, something about helping to keep airways open. I'll try to find a report...

Hmmm, don't read too much into it, small study and many variables but here's the report.