why do people seem to think your risking harming your baby if you cosleep, yet if you put baby in there own room thats totallty acceptable?

[robinredbreast]

just wondering?

Probably because of that report some time ago of a couple who woke up to find their baby dangling down the back of their headboard, dead.
If a baby were to die of SIDS it's unlikely you could prevent it if the lo was in your room or not, but feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

Message withdrawn

Yes really. It was awful, the parents were basically warning people about the possibility of it happening. I would think if there was no gap between your mattress and headboard it would be ok though.

I saw a cartoon once of Mr and Mrs Stone Age lying awake in their cave, with Baby Stone Age wailing in the cave next door, wild animals howling outside, and Mrs Stone Age saying 'But the health visitor says she's safer in her own cave'

I do realise we are no longer in the Stone Age but it did seem to say it all to me.

There was a research study , years back, that saw an increased risk of SIDS amoungst co-sleepers, so advice went against co-sleeping for a while. I think that the researchers had failed to take smokers/heavy drinkers/drug takers out of the co-sleeping sample, and once they did this the results returned to normal ito SIDS risk - but the scare remains. And, as nickernacker says, you have to co-sleep safely (watching out for covering little babies with duvet is the other big one)

As i understand it, the risk of SIDS is lower if baby is kep in the room for 6 mths - no-one knows exactly why, as one one knows exactly what causes SIDS - but it may be that higher levels of carbon monoxide in the room help breathing or that hearing parents breathing helps baby regulate its own breathing.

Found this -

Baby care advice shown on last night?s (25 September) Channel 4 programme Bringing Up Baby increases the risk of cot death, warns FSID, the UK?s leading cot death charity.

Advice on the programme that a baby should sleep in its own bedroom from day one has, in fact, been found to double the risk of cot death. FSID and the Department of Health both advise that the safest place for babies to sleep for the first six months is in a cot in a room with their parents and not in the baby?s own room. Research(1) shows that a baby who sleeps in a separate room from the parents is nearly twice as likely to die as a cot death than one who shares a room with the parents

We didn't co-sleep, but I can understand why you would want to. I can;t understand why you would want your baby to sleep in another room from a few days old when all the research says otherwise

I think i rememeber reading somewher its to do with the baby being able to hear the mothers breathing pattern that reduces cot death if sleeping in room with parents. I could be wrong though.
I dont co sleep, I would love to but dd was little at birth, and dd1 often climbs into our bed in the morning.
There was a report a few years back of a mum that was feeding her baby in bed and fell asleep and killed the baby I always rememeber that and shake myself awake if i start falling a sleep when night feeding.

Okay, as well as being admittedly skeptical of the whole co-sleeping thing (on my own behalf, it's up to other people what they do. I'm not an expert and even those who are can't profess to know everything...or else why does advice change so frequently?), we kept baby in our room for 3 months for convenience of rocking/settling/feeding etc, but in her own cot. But not 6 months as none of us could stand it any longer.

I find FSID's position on co-sleeping a little difficult to understand. They don't actually come out and advise directly against bedsharing, but a lot of their wording ('there are dangers in bedsharing',
'it's especially dangerous to bedshare if you are a smoker etc.'), imply that they consider it dangerous.

We have ds2 in a bedside cot. I wouldn't sleep a wink if he were in a separate room. In fact, ds1 still sleeps in with us as well (in his own cotbed), and I know I'll be rather when he finally decides to move into the bedthat's waiting for him in his own room.

We have a routine going whereby dh rests/sleeps on the sofa for the first couple of hours of the night with ds2 (in his Moses basket) right next to him - and he says ds2 unfailingly wakes up and becomes unsettled if he gets up. I feel it's entirely plausible that the proximity of the parent/s aomehow regulates the baby's sleep patterns and breathing.

i think its cos the stories you hear about deaths from co sleeping sound so much more horrific than the deaths you dont hear so much about that happen from cot death when the baby is in its own room. take this thread as an example. 2 stories already about squashing your baby/it falling down the gap between the bed and headboard. so much easier to imagine that happening than 'twice the risk of cot death' from sleeping in their own room. we dont tend to operate logically in our behaviour

There was an article in our local paper last month about a six month old baby wriggling down under her mum's duvet and suffocating. Her mum didn't realise until the morning. Terrified me. We had a moses basket right by the bed until our daughter outgrew it. I slept (!)with my hand touching her most nights, but don't think I'd have relaxed at all if she'd been in our bed.

Good point morocco. I also think that SIDS deaths are 'unexplained' whereas co-sleeping deaths would cause such obvious parental guilt, 'what if I didn't notice ....'

That's why I couldn't co-sleep OR put either of them in their own rooms before 6 months, Morocco. It just was not worth the risk IMO

Has there ever been a story about sleep deprived parents hurting or possibly killing their baby because they listened to helpful advice and kept the baby in their room until age 6 months though? Because it was heading that way and I'm sure we can't have been the only ones.

I'm sure you weren't, nicker. AS you said earlier, it's up to other people what they do. I'm speaking from my own experience both as a parent, and an information officer within the NHS, and there's no way I could have ignored the well researched stats and information that exists at the moment - but I stress that is MY choice only.

Before I tried it I would have agreed that I was seriously worried about co sleeping. I don't do it very often, but when I do I am fully aware of DS all night, there is no way I could roll onto him. Strange as it may seem, I also have the best night sleep when co sleeping.

We were until we moved her to her own room. Sorry, that's what sleep deprivation does, it makes you angry, depressed etc. Part of pnd i assume. Dads get depressed too.

my sister's MIL had a baby sister who died in a co-sleeping incident. Scary. Nevertheless, I brought my dcs from their bedside cot into my very wide bed to feed them. i would wrap the duvet under me, and have a baby blanket to put over them, and try very very hard not to fall asleep. Once i was too tired to be careful and woke up in a panic with dd under the duvet, but thankfully she was fine. Another time my dh came in to find me sitting up, fast asleep, boobs akimbo, baby asleep in my arms with her head tipped right back at a terrifying angle. They moved into their own rooms at 6 months.

Tell me about it, nicker...our DS1 was still waking at 2, by which time we'd had DD. There were endless nights when we'd be up with both of them. Night after night after night after night...hideous, it was. DS2 is 8 months now, and pretty much left to get on with it

we coslept till ds had enough.i found best way to avoid critisism was to avoid talking about it.i only mentioned it if someone said do you co sleep or does your ds sleep in cot.no arguements.

Well, DD is nearly 1 now, and fortunately no sleeping problems. I actually don't see a problem either way, I mean, what business is it of anyone else's? When talking to people who aren't close friends with babies of their own - how on earth does it crop up in conversation anyway? Do people ask so they can criticize on purpose?

Ours were in a cot in our room from birth until they were 6 months old. They did co-sleep occasionally when either I was just too tired to get up and put them back in the cot or they just wouldn't settle.

nickernacker I think with the sleep depravation problem the answer is for the parents to sleep apart, maybe taking it in turns to be with the baby. And I know that is not fantastic either.

Am I correct in thinking that co-sleeping is the norm in Japan? And that they have the lowest SIDS rate in the world?

I was under the impression also that there was a wide body of research which suggested that co-sleeping is actually safer than seperate sleeping, and that more studoes are being commissioned to find out more about this.

No, not just 'not nice', there is nowhere else for one of us to sleep!

Sorry, that was a bit abrupt.