Co sleeping and SIDS leaflet at doctors

[Rowanhart]

I was planning in co sleeping when our DD is born in three weeks.

I was at docs today waiting for whooping cough jab when saw a leaflet called Risks of co sleeping.

In it said that infant mortality due to co sleeping is high the area we live in and we should never co sleep.

Also had quotes from two mums whose babies had died due to co sleeping,

I thought it was recommended? Confused now but thinking co sleeping is a big no no...

Just make sure that if you do fall asleep together you have planned for it and your bed is safe.

It's unplanned co-sleeping where people accidentally fall asleep with their babies while sitting up/on sofas or in a bed that isn't set up for it that really dangerous.

I had no intention of co-sleeping.

DD however had other ideas. She absolutely hated being in a moses basket or cot. After falling asleep sitting up in bed feeding on several occasions, I decided that it was probably safer to find out what i could about safe co sleeping.

www.unicef.org.uk/BabyFriendly/News-and-Research/Research/Bed-sharing-and-infant-sleep/ I felt more comfortable doing it because it was 'recommended' by UNICEF iykwim, and did it from day 1 with dc2.

With DC1 I wasn't planning on co-sleeping at all but he woke up 6 times a night until he was 12 months and I went back to work when he was 8 months old so we ended up with him in the bed out of sheer physical necessity.

This time we have planned ahead and bought a bedside cot so DC2 has their own space but with the reach-feed-replace benefits of co-sleeping.

Honestly though, the 'absolutely do no co-sleep' advice for your area is very general. Unless your area has some sort of toxic smog that affects every single household, safe co-sleeping in your PCT is just as safe as safe co-sleeping everywhere else.

I just want to say that by definition nobody knows what causes SIDS as a baby is said to have died of SIDS when every other known cause has been excluded.

Three in a bed is a great book, but tbh the most recent edition that I can see was published in 1999 which in terms of research is a little while ago - I would be cautious about accepting it as the most up-to-date view.

Joan good point re clarifying about what causes SIDS - it's what I've read too. But unless my logic is off...if SIDS is defined as when there's a death and all other causes excluded...how can that leaflet say co-sleeping causes SIDS? Surely then the death would be defined as a known cause?

My copy of Three in a Bed was re-published in 2006 - still a while ago admittedly though. It's a great book I suppose in terms of arming you with a counter-perspective to go and find out your own, more recent research.

I stopped breathing as an infant. I was 9mo and sitting up in my parents room. My Dad did mouth to mouth (mum was downstairs, I think I he caught me just in time)

I know of two cases personally of women who were feeding their newborn in the middle of the night and suffocated them. So tired and feeding on the sofa.

I'm not sure what my point is

I co-slept with mine, in fact my first mw suggested it. Think it saved my sanity.

But, a family member lost her baby to SIDS and was co-sleeping.

I reckon its prob safer to do considered co-sleeping (no drink/fags etc) than not.

I'm was really aware when DS was little that I had almost died. I was terrified I'd lose him if I just left him for a minute to go to the loo.

Just....if my Dad hadn't been in the room at the exact moment I would have died in my crib.

I agree with Jakeyblue. To me sleeping with your baby is the most natural thing in the world, obs. there are some precautions to take. As far as I know it is safe to do so if breastfeeding but not sure what the statistics or arguments against are for those who are bottle feeding.

This is why I think co-sleeping is a bad idea, there is a known risk, if mum (or dad) are exhausted (which lets face it they will be) how can it be safe?

Am constantly amazed at how many mums on here claim to do it as I don't know any one in rl who co-sleeps.

I think the fact is that babies are at risk of SIDS full stop. Some babies die in cots but no ones printing leaflets saying not to use them.
I actually was never exhausted entirely because I co slept. I didn't have to keep getting up every hour and ds and I both had a great nights sleep.

girliefriend - what do you think is the known risk though? I mean, have you looked at all the counter thinking on it, because I am not sure what the known risk is. Many, many countries around the world do it from a cultural or economical perspective - it's just in the West that we've made this perhaps inaccurate connection.

It's been said repeatedly - planned co-sleeping as a conscious decision with appropriate safe measures in place is very different to falling asleep on the sofa, for example.

Somewhere along the line in the West, someone said there's a risk and we've all taken it as gospel. It's entirely a personal decision, I'm not trying to push it on anyone - I think it just frustrates me that this party of line of it not being safe is pushed because - as that quote from FSID said - they have 3 seconds to grab people's attention. They can't say in those 3 seconds - it's OK to do it with X, Y, Z safeguards in place. So they just say don't do it instead.

Co-sleeping in the parental bed has never been isolated as a an independent risk factor for SIDS i.e. in the absence of other risk factors by any study.

Look up the work of James McKenna and Helen ball in this area. A very large cohort
Study which was carried out recently by something called the 'Born in Bradford' project compared infant care practices of south Asian families to those of their white British counterparts and found a much higher prevalence of SIDS in the latter population where there is less co-sleeping.

Irrc something like over 75% of mothers will cosleep with their baby at some point. A lot of.women who are rather worryingly being told not to cosleep and so.miss out on important advice on how to.do.so.safely.

Co-sleeping in the parental bed has never been isolated as a an independent risk factor for SIDS i.e. in the absence of other risk factors by any study - except Stumbleine in this NHS leaflet - which begs the question, why is the NHS pushing inaccurate information?

I completely agree with you, by the way :) It bothers me they'd put out information like in the leaflet in the OP, because it also then leads to questioning what else they're putting out inaccurately.

girliefriend - if the mother is exhausted from getting up in the night to feed the baby, isn't it most dangerous to be sitting on a sofa? More babies die from parents falling asleep with them on sofas than in beds set up for co-sleeping.

I actually wasn't exhausted at all when I co-slept with DS as a newborn, because I slept through most of his feeds and didn't have to get up in the night. DH was never next to him in the bed.

I know, it's.downright dangerous information!
The World health organization advocates safe cosleeping yet the nhs (in places) adopted this line.
The problem is that historically a lot of the data on SIDS is muddied by all 'cosleeping' being lumped I'm together.

Excuse the appalling typing am on my phone.

FOr those not intending to cosleep but maybe considering it: we tried not to (because I found that sleeping around DS was dreadful on my back), but we also lost the duvet for a few months so I could happily go to sleep whilst he fed next to me on bad nights and I made DH take him back when I woke up with back pain later. It was a tiny change and made for a much easier first few months.

It also helped that as soon as he was big enough he was in a gro sleeping bag so didn't get disturbed by the cold sheet in the moses basket.

One of the biggest risk factors to co-sleeping is if a baby is formula fed. Breast fed babies are at far less risk - probably because their mother doesn't sleep as deeply, and due to positioning (baby more likely to be at mum's chest height rather than on pillows).

Other risk factors are being male, small at birth or being Afro-Carribean.

Not that being male, small at birth or Afro-Carribean are themselves "high risk or mean you shouldn't necessarily co-sleep - just worth bearing in mind when weighing up your own risk.

If we hadn't co-slept none of us would have got any sleep for about 3 years - certainly if you want to breastfeed. DD slept for one night in her crib at about a week old and we thought we had finally cracked it - but that was the one and only night she slept in that crib!

When she was about two we had a cot bed which butted up to my side of the bed (make sure you get one which opens on the correct side or either side) but she spent most of the night in our bed still.

We have a big 6' bed which helped.

Every single member of the medical profession told us it was dangerous. I just stopped asking about it, I got sick of everyone telling me I would either kill my baby or was "making a rod for my own back".

It is obviously dangerous if you drink or smoke or do drugs.

UNICEF have some good information on co-sleeping:

www.unicef.org.uk/BabyFriendly/News-and-Research/Research/Bed-sharing-and-infant-sleep/

I never planned to co-sleep but we did buy a co-sleeper cot. It was barely used for months though. On night two I realised that DD wasn't going to sleep away from me, in a moses basket or cot, and gave in to co-sleeping. She slept in a sleeping bag next to me, without the duvet on top of her, away from her father. She would feed on and off all night and I basically slept through it. Our nights were almost undisturbed and I got vast amounts more sleep than my NCT friends. I can only remember maybe three or four nights in her first six months that she cried, and they were teething related.

In the end she co-slept for at least part of the night until she was 16 months, as we had to have her in with us owing to lack of room. When we moved, she immediately settled into sleeping in her own cot all night. I had the occasional glass of wine throughout that period but am not really a heavy drinker, and I had no other risk factors. We still breastfeed and she definitely used feeding at night for comfort for quite a long time - I was a human dummy!

Co-sleeping isn't for everyone but it worked for us really well. I think my husband was very nervous for quite a long time though, and was glad when we got our bed back. It didn't do wonders for our sex life.