Experts unite to warn parents of bedsharing dangers - new advice from FSID

[Caz10]

I apologise whole-heartedly if this topic upsets anyone, I really don't mean to. I am just curious to as to people's views on this.

I get the FSID email and this was their headline article.

I understand all the guidelines re if you are a smoker, been drinking etc, but this seeems to advise no co-sleeping AT ALL. I co-slept with my dd (now 18mths) quite a lot - I thought I would do so again if we had a dc2 - but that piece worries me a bit?

Just wondering what others thought?

It seems to contradict the advice coming from eg Unicef

purplemonkey - in that article, one of the recommendations was "Do not leave your baby on its own".

I think that is very relevant to Japan. Obviously futons are used more than beds - but as Japan has become more Westernised, beds are used more and more. As are cots for babies. HOWEVER, the cot is usually situated in or close to the main living area - so babies are always close to everyone else, even when they are asleep.

And most people I know would use the cot for naps etc. but usually co-sleep at night, on a futon.

Babies will usually share a single futon with their mothers, and fathers/siblings will be on a separate futon.

Co-sleeping really is the norm here - traditionally up to the age of about 6.

I think that peoples' response to this is a clear indication that people don't want to be told what they are doing is wrong, even if it potentially is.

If you co-sleep then you feel this is best for you and your baby, for whatever reason, and don't want to be told different.

So i imagine you're just as happy to rubbish the guidelines on weaning before 26 weeks and will be less judgemental of those who choose to do so?

A child that is smothered by a parent while co-sleeping would not be recorded as sids. Equally one that suffocated under a duvet/overheated etc. It is therefore quite possible that there is an additional number of deaths that occur as result of co-sleeping which are not recorded in this artacle.

just to clarify - the article said "Do not leave your baby alone when asleep". Japanese babies just sleep when they are tired, in the middle of the living room, with the rest of the household carries on around them. At night, the mum will just take the baby with her when she goes to bed. There is no pressure for a bedtime routine/set nap times etc. Japanese mothers would look at you quizzically if you asked if about routines, or sleeping through etc. It just doesn't feature as a part of childcare.

I co-slept with DCs 2,3 & 4. I didn't with no.1, and feel that I put her in far greater danger by not co-sleeping, because I was so tired that on several occasions I nodded off on the sofa whilst feeding her, only for me to wake up to find her face down among all the sofa cushions. Controlled co-sleeping, with DH banished if he'd so much had a mouthful of alcohol, seems to me to be the safer option.

another thing to worry about

So to be clear on this, the advice is, don't drink, smoke or overheat your baby. Is that any different from last week's advice.

YES some babies died when sleeping with their parents, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the fact they were in bed with mum and dad caused it. Apparently a quarter of us can expect to die in our sleep (Wiki Answers - quote from some book, may be bogus I don't know).

Perhaps in the case of SIDS, it's genetic, I don't actually think anyone really knows yet. So yes take good care but FFS there is no evidence that anything can be done about the tragedy of cot death. Is somehow better to wake up and find your baby dead in a cot than in the bed next to you?

Could you actually do anything in that situation? Obviously you wake up and your child is choking then you can do something. But if your baby stops breathing there is no noise to alert you, in the cot or in the bed, so unless you are sitting nervously on the side of the bed watching the cot, exactly how can you help?

It's every parents nightmare but I just don't understand how the evidence of a percentage of babies dying in bed with their parents correlates with an increased risk of dying other than allegorically?

I had an uncharacteristic adverse reaction to the title of the e mail (Three in a bed and the little one said...nothing), and have de-subscribed from the list. I know it's an imprtant issue, worthy of discussion and debate, worthy of awarenes, and a charity that nees money. But I really don't want unexpected titles about dead children in my inbox.

And I'm not normally reactive like this - not sure exactly what it was about this e mail. I elly resent the sensationalism of the title.

There is a nasty little graphic on their website too. It has really offended me as well blu - you're not alone

wannabe, you are wrong. I have seen it in a research article on SIDS. Babies described as being victims of SIDS were reported as being found (and I repeat):
on the floor (obviously not suffocation)
at the foot of the bed (very probably suffocation)
under the parent (almost certainly suffocation or crush injury)

That's it. I'm moving to Japan!

ye gods blu, is that true?

thumbwitch is right, wannabe, it's more likely to be the other way round tbh. but i do think you raise an interesting point aobut how we view the various guidelines we're given.

are the fsid guidelines automatically adopted by the hcps? have to say i'm with whomoved, i don't htink much has changed here. my cousin nearly died of cot death twice, and had to be fitted with all sorts of monitors. she was in a cot, she was just lucky that her mum was a nurse and spotted a strange slowing in her breathing and then her stopping altogether. surely that could happen anywhere? i'm interested in the figures for suffocation only, i think, and they'd need to be split by location.

Aitch - yes, that's what's in the subject line of the e mail. just checked in my deleted items.

Oh, D'ya mean 'ye gods they put that in the title'? or 'ye gods you over-reacting hysterical eeejit'?

I have to admit that this article made my blood run cold. We co slept with DS until he was about 3 months because we were just demented with sleeplessness. He just didn't want to be parted with a warm person for a minute. He slept between our heads on a really firm, shallow pillow, well away from the duvet.

I think if there is a next time I would try harder to settle them in a crib. It didn't help that the stupid moses basket we bought was so useless that if DS moved a muscle he's hit the side. It was pretty but useless. First timer error there.

i mean ye GODS what twenty-one-year-old marketing moron thought that up? they shoudl be sanctioned, that's completely disgusting.

i hope you complain. the tricky thing with the fsid is that as well as reserach they support grieving parents, i always wonder if that makes them 'over-react' as an organisation. (look at me with ectopics, fgs, i'm a total voice of doom any time anyone has bleeding, despite it ninety nine times out of a hundred being fine. but having been one of the hundred... etc). i really think that if someone has lost a baby and signed up to the emails, that could tip them right over. please email them to complain, blu.

I take your point, wannaBe, about agreeing with what you want to agree with, etc.

But I do think your analogy with weaning doesn't hold. The health professionals don't say: "don't wean before 26 weeks, or your baby risks death", which would, 99 times out of 100, be clearly untrue, and would thus be instantly dismissed by most parents. They advise later weaning for demonstrable reasons: the maturity of the baby's gut; other indications of readiness, e.g. loss of tongue-thrust, sitting up, etc. Plenty of parents modulate the advice, noticing, for instance, that their baby can sit, etc., say at 21 weeks, and begin weaning then. While a dogmatic follower of advice would hold off til 26 weeks exactly , it is reasonable, I think, to begin weaning a little earlier than 26 weeks if your individual baby shows the right signs, etc. Similarly, many choose not to wean til well after 26 weeks. Etc.

This anti-cosleeping advice, however, is couched as scaremongering. That's what's wrong about it. I don't disagree with it because I do it; I disagree because I think that, as others have said, the blanket "don't do it; it risks death" approach is not convincing, or requires modulation.

This isn't new advice, it is the same advice that I was given when I had ds nearly 5 years ago.

good post penthesileia (as an aside, your name is awful difficult to type out!)

I have been to, and been aware of a few cot deaths
I realise it is only a small experience, but each time if bed sharing has been involved, it has either been done badly(baby right under filthy duvet/under stacked high pillows/rolled off between bed and wall), or the mother has known problems with alcohol/drugs.

I am not saying by any means that these are always the reasons, or that these people would be any less devastated by the death of their baby, or are less worthy of advice. It would though, be useful to see the statistics when the good bed sharing advice is followed properly. Although as previously mentioned, this may be difficult to obtain.

I have bed shared with all of mine, and would do so again. I go in the middle, remove the pillows, have a separate cover for my baby, and a mesh bed guard to stop them rolling out.

I guess like many other things it is the nanny state at work.

thank you poppity for sharing that info - that rather bears out the scaremongering idea, doesn't it?

What a nasty, alarmist article. The study is tiny and makes no reference to whether people were co-sleeping properly, or whether they were drunk, drugged etc.

A huge proportion of the world's population co-sleep as a matter of course, and SIDs is unknown in these societies.

A HV told me I was quite right about co-sleeping but it was policy not to recommend it because of the risk some people would not do it properly.

There is a study(I don't think I'm allowed to print it?)from 1999, which shows how strongly linked socioeconomic deprivation and bed sharing is linked to cot death.

In countries such as Japan and Hong Kong where co sleeping is common, the risk is actually lower.

There is also some evidence to show that babies maintain their breathing better when bed sharing.

It does also say that there is increased risk co sleeping with a child under 14 weeks, but that this was associated with overcrowded housing conditions, extreme tiredness, the baby being under a duvet, and alcohol.

I guess it is 10 years old, but I can't find any newer studies. It seems as if they have rehashed the advice as there are still some ignoring it.