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

Nicky, sorry to bang on about this, but how do you know it's SIDS specific, since I've already said that the known causes for death from co-sleeping are added into SIDS stats? There is nothing in that abstract (and I can't access the full article) to say that they have removed the deaths from squashing, suffocation, falling out of bed from the SIDS stats - and I doubt they have.

Although in fairness most parents want to know about overall safety, so for those purposes SIDS and suffocation are pretty interchangeable. I agree it's technically wrong when researching SIDS causes though.

I remember that study Nicky linked to. Wasn't there a bit of a kerfuffle about how they chose to add in missing alcohol data? I remember one media commentator pointing out that Sids is more common at weekends.

Oh and the suffocating from falling asleep on the sofa - which is neither SIDS nor co-sleeping but is also added into the figures.

Sorry Thumb -Grr,I can't do a the full paper link-I'll try to get the full paper (DP's a researcher I might have read it through one of his journal links-can't remember) . I simply do not believe that a child dying of injuries sustained by falling out of bed would ever have been included in SIDS stats. I did read the whole paper (all be it a while ago now) and these situations would not be described as SIDS because, well, they aren't are they??

It definitely excluded sofa sleeping

Penguins- I remember something about the alcohol figure too. When I read it though it was still compelling to me- not enough to rule out co sleeping if you do it safely and are knackered but enough to make it incorrect to say "it's every bit as safe as baby being in it's own cot" IYSWIM.
Keep X posting- SIDS is also more common in mothers who are under 20 years old and in little boys over little girls. I don't think that they were necessarily arguing it caused SIDS but it was a tiny risk increasing factor.

I wish I could find the paper I read some years ago that specifically showed they were including squashing, suffocation and falling out of bed as SIDS - it wasn't a big study, it was only a small number they were talking about but they definitely showed they were being classed as SIDS. I was shocked when I read it, which is why it's stuck with me.

Agree. Except I would probably refer back to my earlier post. It might be fairer to say that it's not quite as safe as a cot for a baby who sleeps equally well in both settings.

I fell asleep on the sofa with my youngest after many wakeful nights. He was my first bf baby. I co slept after that not to risk falling asleep on the sofa. Frankly I see co sleeping as a biological norm. Cots are a new invention but the reasons for co sleeping are still there in that babies still need feeding through out the night. More often than not I slept through night feeds after the baby latched on which was not possible during ff. Also in my experience of bf night feeds were more frequent and went in for a lot longer than my ff babies so co sleeping made that possible without being totally exhausted. He went straight into his own bed at 1 but used to come in for feeds and like his big sister he still drops by for visits during the night in occassion pretty regularly

because unlike everyone else's children it seems, she still breastfeeds a million times through the day and night eeehhh - nope

Mine have all been EXACTLY like that. And I remember thinking it was just me.

I may get shot down in flames for saying this but it is a genuine question that I don't know the answer too not meant as a dig at anyone but.... how is being asleep on a sofa any different to being asleep in a bed??? If your bf then surely you'd be as close together regardless of where you were.

On a sofa, the risks are much higher because there is so much less room.

In a double bed (and as I said, I kicked DH out - well he chose to go, tbh, because he didn't like the disruption) there is far more space and you can lay flat or on your side, away from your child, when they're not actually feeding. Both DSs lay back on their backs after feeding in the very early days.

Also, sofa feeding involves the risk of cushions --> suffocation again; in a bed, you're not supposed to have the pillows/duvet anywhere near the baby, so this risk is reduced.

And finally, I believe the sofa-sleeping includes people who are sitting up on the sofa, who fall asleep while feeding sitting up, and don't realise they have slumped over the baby, thus suffocating them.

Lexy - sofa is very different

• position (you don't lie flat and stretched out)
• space
• a padded back to the sofa (rather like the suffocation risk from cot bumpers, but worse)
• cushions
• gaps between cushions which a baby can get wedged in, rather than a flat mattress.
• not as firm

Sofa is much higher suffocation risk. A bed (when pillows and covers kept to safe distance) is a smooth flat surface. Sofas have loads of different cushions which a baby can get stuck under, between, etc. Think about how much change and stuff you find stuffed into the sofa, vs how much random crap turns up in bed - not very much!

Plus, sofas are by law treated with anti-flammable stuff which is supposed to be risky if breathed in.

And then the obvious one - less room so easier for them to fall out.

And yes it includes people falling asleep accidentally, where they may have been sitting up.

Sorry I was a bit touchy this morning for no apparent reason. I should have just clicked off the thread TBH :)

Sofas aren't (in my understanding) a higher risk for SIDS, but for suffocation and overlaying. In fact SIDS is unexplained. Suffocation gets conflated with SIDS because it's hard to determine cause of death, but I think it's ridiculous - excuse blunt image, but if the baby's body is found between sofa cushions, there's no way that death should be recorded as SIDS or be used in SIDS figures, in my opinion.

Totally agree with you, Bertie

Because I breast feed and dd wants to feed constantly. I need some sleep even if it is light dozing! I sleep flat on my back and she sleeps on my chest. The first night she came home we were really anti co sleeping and worried about it. How that changed when it became reality!!

Because it was the only way to get any sleep. The day I was so tired that I almost fell down the stairs when carrying DD then had a close shave in the car due to tiredness was the day I accepted the inevitable and started co-sleeping.

Ultimately it all came down to assessing risks and the risk of a number of things happening due to sleep deprivation was way higher than co-sleeping.

Before kids I said I would never Co sleep, and certainly the hv and midwives put the fear of God into you!
I have A 13 mo Ds, he wakes up at 5 am, I bring him into bed for cuddles and we manage to get to sleep til 7, no brainer. Unless he is ill he will spend most of the night in his cot,but I am not getting up at 5 am!

I didn't co-sleep until DS was almost 5 months old and that was only because we'd gone away for a few days and he wouldn't settle in his travel cot. I was scared every night about rolling on him or suffocating him so I could never fully switch off. When we returned back home he was fine going back in his cot.

When he hit 8 months he had some form of sleep regression and I resorted to co-sleeping because it was the only way I would get any sleep. I wasn't too nervous about co-sleeping at this age as he was big enough and strong enough to either hit me or roll away from me if I was getting too close.

After a month of this though we did sleep training to get him back sleeping in his cot as I couldn't cope with sharing a bed with him every night.

He's just turned one and for a few nights over the last week he's ended up back in bed with me as he's teething and he's constantly asking up and bring inconsolable. I'm back to being nervous about sharing with him and not being able to fully switch off as I'm so worried he's going to wake up without me realising and crawl off the bed

Ps) I'm a children's nurse and within 2 years of working on a particular ward we had the very saddening case of 5 babies that had died through suffocation when their parent had fallen asleep with them on the sofa

I think most cases of suffocation due to cosleeping happen when exhausted parents fall into a deep sleep on a sofa and roll over. A reasonably high percentage have alcohol or drugs in their system too.

So if you put that in perspective, probably the safest place to cosleep is in the parental bed, outside of a duvet and not having drunk alcohol or taken drugs. Since it's worked for many centuries in many tribes and nations where it is considered normal and indeed encouraged then I think many deaths from cosleeping could be avoided in this country if only more people were better informed on how to do it safely, rather than made to feel guilty and driving it 'underground'.

OP, i coslept with ds on my chest, in our bed, when he was a newborn until about 12 weeks. He was only comfortable on his tummy as he suffered with reflux and wind, but I was aware that the advice is not to put babies on their tummies. I therefore felt happier with him on my chest so I knew what he was doing. It meant we all slept and avoided exhaustion so were never in the situation whereby we coslept on a sofa. Incidentally ds is now 4 and is a fantastic sleeper - in his own bed. We had no problems at all settling him in his cot when the time was right.