Someone explain co - sleeping? ??

[lexyloub]

For me co - sleeping especially with a newborn / young baby is a big fat no no but seen as so many people do it maybe I've got the wrong idea about what co sleeping actually is.
My perception of co sleeping is basically when baby sleep in Mum's bed rather than moses basket or cot. I assume this is mainly for breastfed babies (Again I could be wrong ) so they can latch on to Mum at any point during the night to feed.
My point is why would anyone do this surely the risk of suffocation, either by slipping down under the duvet or even by getting suffocated by Mum accidentally, is so huge you wouldn't contemplate putting your child in that situation. Why can't baby be put back into cot where it's much safer after a feed?? I won't even go into then trying to get your child to sleep in a bed/cot when it's older that's a whole other thread in itself.
Someone please tell me I'm wrong in my perception and that it means something completely different where there is no risk to baby

If baby sleeps in bed with you and you have not been drinking, smoking or taking drugs then it does not have the same risks attached. I have three dc's. The older two slept in bed with me because they seemed to like the physical proximity and settled back to sleep after a feed much quicker. Personally I cannot understand how people can function when they are settling baby back in it's own space after every feed as this can take ages with some babies and must make mum exhausted. Dc 3 is now 4 months old and sleeps beautifully in his own crib, is very contented and settled by himself so there's no need to co sleep. And both my two who co slept they were both happy in their own beds all night by 18 months.

Yes I do have children 3 in fact. 7 4 and 3 wks. My 4 yr old was actually in my bed with me and baby had woken for a feed which just got me thinking about co sleeping. None of my children have slept with Me as a baby instead they've been in cot/moses at side of my bed. And yes I had just put baby back down after a feed same as I had done with the previous 2 when they were babies, maybe I have been lucky to have 3 good babies who have slept and settled well.if the older 2 have been in with me because they've not been well etc I've never been able to sleep properly so I can't imagine myself having that light sleep continually.
Wherethewild I couldn't of put it better myself.
I was thinking this is a taboo thing that your told not to do but may people do anyway, I've never had any advice from hv Dr midwife etc saying to sleep with your baby I've always been told it's something you just don't do in fact hv went on a bit too much about how they don't recommend it

Well I've been told both times with my last two dc's (4months and 4 years) by midwives at home visits about how to co sleep safely. Both times I was told the main risks occur when falling asleep on the sofa or in a chair so not to do that but given advice about safe co sleeping in bed

Lexy - I think it's a bit like the "no alcohol at all in pregnancy EVER" advice - because some people will hear the "you can do this..." and then switch off before they take in all the caveats. So telling some women that they can have a single alcoholic drink in a week (for example) would mean to them that they can get blitzed out of their brain once a week.
Similarly, saying that co-sleeping can be ok ^if done correctly and no drinking, no smoking, no other risk factors" - they'll only hear the first bit and ignore the rest.

So to make sure that the entire population is covered, guidelines are set for the lowest levels of understanding - NO drinking AT ALL, and NO co-sleeping.

It seems you can have positive experiences from Co sleeping I have only ever heard the cons which is why I asked about the pros of it. I read another thread in here a few days ago where a few had said they had woken up and their babies had been under the covers and not known how long they'd been there thankfully the banned had been ok but I was screaming at the screen why would you put yourself in that situation? I don't think I'll ever be convinced there's no risks but I can see from what you've said these can be reduced if done properly

From what I can gather the HCPs have to cover their backs, which is why the blanket (sorry) advice. Presumably.

I do really wonder though if it would have been a different outcome for ds3 if I had listened to their advice and put him in a cot (not that he ever, ever settled lying down anyway unless I was there - maybe silent reflux or something?) but the several times I helped him remember to breathe again were quite frightening. If I hadn't been there, he might have not started again.

No way of knowing.

As with many other PPs I was totally against co sleeping, however DS1 had other ideas. I drove myself mad with the idea that he'd still be on my bed at 32. He moved out in one night at 6 months, perfectly happily. I did try to follow the safety guidelines and even bought a new (firmer) bed. I did have a co sleeper cot but he was having none of it.

I never tried the cot with DD and for the first 3 months, she slept on one side of my bed whilst I slept on the other. DH was in the spare room. Now she sleeps in the co sleeper and DH is back. I'll be moving her at 6 months.

To an extent you get what you're given sleep wise, some babies will sleep in a cot straight away, some won't. Either way you just try to make your child as safe as you can.

Co sleeping can actually help prevent sids
This is not true. There is evidence that co sleeping increases the risk of SIDS (hence NICE guidelines). This is when all other things are equal (sober, bf mums etc) and deaths from direct suffocation are separate. However, SIDS is mercifully very rare and if all other guidelines are followed the risks of falling asleep on the sofa or generally being so knackered all of the time you struggle to cope outweigh the tiny increase in risk from co sleeping for most families. If your baby won't sleep anywhere else what are you going to do?
I personally found co sleeping so bloody uncomfortable. ds was a winter baby so having no covers on the top half of my body, wearing a fleece instead was a pain, having to stay more or less in the same position all night was uncomfy etc. For the first 10 days or so we stayed awake, holding him in shifts then gradually put him into his moses for increasing periods of time. After 6 months (and up to now) we bring him into bed with us occasionally, when he's ill mainly.

it is not possible to 'squash' your baby unless you are drunk or drugged in which case no you should not be co sleeping

I am not against co sleeping, it's not a choice I made but people need to know the risks and saying that a mum can't roll over on the baby etc is not helpful.

The incident I mentioned earlier was a situation where the mother woke up half lying on the baby who had died. The post mortem found that it was from her rolling on her with no drugs or alcohol present. Of course there are safeguards against this, the way you lie and things but saying that something never happens is not helpful. It is a risk, however minute.

"And yes I had just put baby back down after a feed same as I had done with the previous 2 when they were babies, maybe I have been lucky to have 3 good babies who have slept and settled well."

Yes, OP, you have been very lucky.

I have co-slept from birth with my younger two and from the point of near hallucinating exhaustion with my eldest.

Yes, if you have a baby who goes back down in a crib (or indeed have never had children) it seems so simple. Why take the risk.

However, the fact was that my children were low risk for SIDS in every way. Therefore co-sleeping was far safer for them than me crashing the car or dropping them down the stairs due to extreme and monumental sleep deprivation.

A very few mothers plan to co-sleep from birth with their first child. The majority who do so end up out of necessity. They may find they like it, but that isn't normally the first driver.

I co-slept with DD2 because I kept falling asleep when feeding DD1 and then waking up disorientated and feeling around to work out where she was. Planned co-sleeping (on your side, duvet and pillows well out of the way, cellular blanket over you and the baby is MUCH safer than that.

^ou have a baby.

Your baby refuses to sleep anywhere but next to you.

You consider neither of you ever sleeping again.

And realise that Nope! this is not an option.^

Rootypig has it, this is exactly how we changed our mind re co-sleeping. It took a week, in which I became so sleep deprived I hallucinated.

I have now read quite a bit more about co-sleeping, so I know that the research which is used to link co-sleeping and SIDS has some big problems, mainly that it doesn't consider the difference between safe and unsafe arrangements. So many of the deaths put down to co-sleeping may actually have been caused by sleeping on a sofa or under duvets or with someone who's been drinking or who smokes. Breastfeeding reduces the risk too, as you don't sleep as deeply.

I would agree with that. It's actually frustratingly difficult to get decent data on the safety of planned, safe co-sleeping:

• lots of studies use all co sleeping, including unsafe set ups like sofas. This is the biggest issue with the data set;
• some studies determine it by place of last sleep. Since we don't know what causes SIDS, it is possible that a baby who was out of sorts and so wouldn't settle in the crib was actually becoming unwell, so the two things are correlated not causative;
• studies can't be random control trialled. It is possible that babies who won't settle in a crib and end up co-sleeping regularly are more likely to have some underlying issue. Again, the possibility of correlation not causation.

And, my biggest bugbear is that, understandably given the complexities, they are normally comparing an ideal cot situation against co-sleeping. Most people who decide to co-sleep are not measuring it against an ideal cot situation. They are measuring it against crashing the car/dropping the baby/falling asleep slumped over the baby during a feed. Planned co sleeping is a hell of a lot safer than all of that.

With my twins, the newborn feeding, burping and nappy changing took around 2 and a half hours, which gave me half an hour to sleep before I had to start feeding again. So it was easier to plonk them down next to me rather than getting up to put them down further away. It might have only taken 5 minutes but those minutes were too precious. As soon as they started dropping feeds they went in their own room but it took 8 weeks of sleep training for them to self settle in their cots.

With my youngest, I couldn't put her down for 3 months at all. Not in a cot, a car seat, a baby swing, a rocker. She had to be upright constantly or she screamed until she vomited. So I slept sitting upright in my bed, holding her. I have tried getting her in her own cot but at 1 and a half she is still sleeping next to me because unlike everyone else's children it seems, she still breastfeeds a million times through the day and night and I'm certainly not spending my whole night sitting up in a chair in her room!

NickyEds - I believe that it is not true that co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS. And I believe that because the deaths from co-sleeping are generally not SIDS, they are, as I said upthread, generally due to known causes - suffocation, squashing, falling out of bed. These have been added into SIDS statistics but they really shouldn't be.

If you don't want to do it, then don't.

What is the point of starting scathing threads about it?

Unfair, Bertie - the OP's third post says that she was looking for positives to co-sleeping as she'd only ever heard negatives about it.

My understanding is that you can squash the baby if you're exhausted, so we coslept to try and avoid getting to that hallucinating stage. We tried the Moses basket about 3 times! I wouldn't fancy it with a winter baby though, I had loads of clothes on and still got cold with no covers.

The main problem is that 2 years on, I've got used to having the bed guard, I think I need it now. I nearly fell out of bed on holiday!

Ah right, sorry, I had missed that post.

I still find it strange, though. OP clearly doesn't want to co sleep so why would you look for positives about something you're not interested in?

I loved co sleeping and it's tiring to see the same threads saying it's dangerous and stupid when it's not.

I co-slept from birth with DD (planned to after reading "Three in a Bed").

DD is now a teenager, but my recollection is that co-sleeping is safe only when

• The mother breastfeeds. Formula feeding and co-sleeping is not recommended.

• The mother does not use drugs or alcohol.

• The mother doesn't smoke.

• Appropriate bedding is used.

I don't believe that NICE guidelines took into account the different between formula feeders and breastfeeders (apologies if this is incorrect) and therefore their research is somewhat flawed.

FreckledLeopard- Also low birth weight and prematurity are risk factors, along with, fairly obviously other adult smoking/drinking etc not just Mum.

Haven't time to re-check now but I think that this was the study I was thinking of- takes bf/ff into account, smoking, drinking and drug taking and defines bed sharing specifically (as opposed to sofa/chair sleeping).It's also SIDS specific.
www.bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002299

As I said, the risks are low, tiny in fact if all other risk factors are low too I don't think that bed sharing is in any way dangerous- just not the safest recommended way to sleep. Far better that though than exhaustion or sofa sleeping.

Freckled thanks for that I've ff all mine so probably why I've always been advised against co sleeping. The reason for my post bertie was because I wanted to understand why so many people did it when I've always been strongly advised against it. It wasn't meant to offend or judge .

i co-sleep a lot with my ds(now 18 months) in fact last night he was in with me all night.

Not so much when he was a newborn but when he got to around 4-5 months and started teething a lot. He liked that extra comfort of being with mum or dad. We were just careful of now pillows or duvets around him.

If you genuinely want to know OP, here's lots of evidence based information about all the options. www.isisonline.org.uk