It is the habit that thousands of sleep-deprived parents fall into: co-sleeping with your baby after feeding or to get them settled.
But yesterday Coroner John Olle issued a blunt warning to parents – sleeping with your baby leads to fatal consequences, with evidence that up to half of babies who are found accidentally dead, are found asleep in bed beside their parents.
News.com.au reports:
In an unprecedented and blunt warning to parents, Coroner John Olle yesterday said sleeping with babies was a potential death trap – yet parents every day put their child’s life at risk through lack of awareness.
From 2008 to 2010, suffocation from sleeping with an adult was the cause of more than half of all sudden infant deaths in NSW.
In the Victorian Coroner’s Court, Mr Olle investigated four cases of babies who died of SIDS – each of them having shared a bed with a parent just before or at the time of their death.
“I am satisfied sharing a sleep surface with an infant is an inherently dangerous activity,” Mr Olle said.
“Caregiver/infant sharing of … beds, sofas, mattresses and armchairs, increases the risk of infant death from a fatal sleep accident and may increase the risk of infant death from SIDS.”
Mr Olle said many parents were unaware of the risks, or received inaccurate information on how babies should sleep….
Sids and Kids general manager Ros Richardson begged parents to heed Mr Olle’s advice: “We know from the statistics how incredibly dangerous it is to sleep with your baby. Babies are brought into bed for breastfeeding and for settling but they must go back to their own bed, next to the parents’ bed.”She said sleep-deprived parents as well as those suffering post-natal depression were often the ones who fell into the trap of dozing off with their newborn.
Author and Mamamia Contributor, Kate Hunter has previously written about co-sleeping. Here is her take:
“About the time the word ‘parent’ became a verb and we started worrying about our style of ‘parenting’, the term ‘co-sleeping’ also entered the language. It refers to what was once known as, ‘being kicked in the lower back all night.’ Not that I would actually know – our kids have never shared our bed. Not even when they were teeny-tiny babies.
Kate Hunter
“Some may take exception to this, but raising a Labrador puppy prepared me well for the first years of parenthood. I knew from noisy, messy experience that once you let a puppy (baby) leave its box (cot) and snuggle into your bed (bed) he would be there for the duration. So, from day one our babies slept in their own cots in their own rooms (by that I mean not ours – baby and toddler shared).
I schlepped down the hallway to feed and change and rock and pat a bazillion million times. Maybe I’d have got more sleep if I’d kept them closer, who knows? Co-sleeping is divisive. Some people (like me) will do anything to avoid it, while others couldn’t live (or sleep) any other way.”
How do you feel about this warning? Did you, do you or would you co-sleep with your baby? Does this advice change your thinking?
Comments
214 Comments so far
I am glad I am not the only parent who practiced in a lab prior to babies!!!
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I mean on a lab, obviously.
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Haha, I thought you were a scientist of some kind.
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How is this any different to the freebirthers? You’re both putting your baby’s life at risk by your actions. Someone suggested that they should charge the woman, whose baby died as a result of freebirthing practices, with manslaughter. If so, perhaps they should also charge parents who practice co-sleeping which results in the death of a baby, with manslaughter. That’d halve the SIDS rate in short order.
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And the reply to that suggestion in the freebirthing thread was that this would not be possible.
So we start to prosecute mothers who freebirth, or who share a bed with thier baby.? Where would it end?
What of mothers who are sleep deprived and accidentally fall asleep with their baby? What of mothers who choose to formula feed, thereby increasing their baby’s risk of SIDS, and their baby happens to die?
What of mothers who smoke during pregnancy- also increasing their baby’s risk of SIDS? Should we charge them too?
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I hate seeing mothers smoking over their babies in prams, I hate seeing a pregnant woman smoking even more. It makes me so angry. I wish some women would wake up and realise it’s not all about them.
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i hate seeing it too, but the answer is not to turn them into criminals.
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obviously…..but It would be nice to give these mothers a good shake and go “hello, you choose to smoke, it would be nice if your baby was given the choice not to smoke”
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Parents have slept with their young for millions of years.
What is wrong with a society that points the finger at such a beautiful, natural practice – mother and baby curled in eachothers arms sleeping.
Death trap? Seriously. There are guidelines to safe co-sleeping: the adult can not be intoxicated, a smoker etc.. And there should be no pillows or big donnas near the infant. It’s like anything, if common sense is applied it shouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately there are always going to be people who have no common sense but applying a blanket statement such as ‘co sleeping is a death trap’ is just ridiculous and completely unfounded.
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Why can’t I sleep near an infant? What do you have against me and other big donnas
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Now now, big donna.. Don’t get your doona in a knot
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That gave me a good laugh!
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Yay Jay!! Well said!!
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having a baby and sleeping with your baby are two different things. Putting it in the same category as having a free birth is ridiculous .
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If we went down that road we’d have to ban epidurals and pethidine for use in labor and elective caesars because these are all things that put the baby at an increased risk.
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Oh those poor parents. Where is the compassion? I fell asleep a couple of times while breastfeeding my baby. I was very careful, setting the alarm on my iphone every 15 minutes when I was really tired just to be cautious. But if luck wasn’t on my side there would have been a five minute window where something could have happened. What kind of society would throw me in jail?
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Not me personally but after reading some of the comments on this topic you would think the co sleeping parents are criminals.
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Good god, can you not see the difference between frebirthing and co-sleeping? Next you’ll be saying kids can’t go in cars.
There is risk associated with everything we do, that risk can be reduced but never totally eliminated.
Other than that, your comment was just plain silly.
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why don’t you lock up all the parents – then the kids will be really safe.
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All our babies slept with us from the start. We had a bassinet beside the bed but they always ended up with us at some stage during the night. We are not smokers or drinkers, or heavy sleepers and I breastfed, however, if I had my time again and know what I know now, I would do my best to avoid it.
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This doesn’t seem to make sense to me, a few people have raised the issue that if half were in beds then the other half were in their cots. And it also doesn’t say whether the people were affected by alcohol or not. Just thinking out loud…
I found the most comfortable set up for us was a bassinet next to my bed and when he got bigger, the cot with a side off so it was like a giant bed but my son had his own covers etc, no pillows…
This worked for us until he moved into
His own room
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Sleeping in a bed with your baby does not increase the risk of your baby dying of SIDS. SIDS refers to sudden infant death, which occurs for no explicable reason and can happen anywhere, at any time. The coroner’s statement is confusing and ill-informed.
Some people below have commented that bed-sharing is irresponsible and against SIDS guidelines. So is putting your newborn baby in a separate room. I know many parents who do this. Their babies are healthy. Breastfeeding has been linked to a reduced SIDS risk. And yet many women continue to choose to formula feed. Are these also not signs of an irresponsible attitude to the safety of your baby?
This all boils down to circumstance and tragedy. Accidents happen. People do things they shouldn’t, like leave a baby in a bathtub unattended for just a minute, only to come back and find the baby has drowned. Everything has a certain element of risk. But bed-sharing is not necessarily the “death trap” many think it is. There are guidelines on how to do it safely.
Our son shared our bed a fair bit when he was newborn. We rocked him to sleep. We kept him close. And boy did we cop flack for it. He is now a healthy 18-month old who sleeps in his own bed every night, where he is placed, wide awake, and settles himself off. I think we need to get back to the instinctual side of parenting and stop letting books, doctors and anyone else so wholly unattached to us and our babies dictate to us what is “best”.
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So True! I think that far too many people think that SIDS refers to all infant deaths (and mostly while asleep). Heres the thing, I know of a girl that died of SIDS while being breast fed while mum was sitting in a lounge chair, SITTING and FEEDING – not asleep in the parental bed. That’s because SIDS happens when and how it happens, for no particular reason. SUFFOCATION and SMOTHERING are what happen in unsafe sleeping positions.
THANKYOU – there is a difference
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I doubt the coroner’s statement is ill-informed, given that it is his job to look over the causes of hundreds of the deaths a year.
Instinctual parenting is great but why would one instinctually ignore a warning like this?
I honestly don’t understand how anyone can get upset at this, saying that they did it with their child and everything was fine, well that’s great but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to this new advice and heed the warning because I’m sure there were mothers saying the same things about car seats when they were first introduced
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Because it is not “new” advice Anon. And it is claiming that something that has been done for centuries is dangerous. Don’t get me wrong, I know that things can improve and with knowledge comes power, but there are some levels of “advice” that take the nature out of parenting and place it squarely in the field of textbooks. Babies are something to be “managed”, someone who must be “trained”.
Talk to most new Mums and they will tell you how many people have told them to keep their babies at arms length, out of the marital bed, out of the marital bedroom, never rock them to sleep and heaven help you if you breastfeed past a year. We are not encouraged to have the closeness with our babies anymore.
And the coroner’s statement is ill-informed because SIDS is not caused by where the baby sleeps. Yes certain elements increase the risk (smoking when pregnant etc.) but what he is referring to is the accidental smothering of a baby, which is not SIDS. He is confusing the issue, and such statements just serve to scare people.
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Anonymous- that’s the point. The public acknowledged that travelling in cars could be dangerous, but instead of banning children from travelling in cars, car seats were introduced.
The same can be said of co-sleeping. It is the natural, instinctual way of sleeping for many mothers and babies. So instead of banning it, several respected institutions have introduced safe co-sleeping guidelines. This is so much more helpful than fear filled Coroner’s statements.
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I’m sorry Rihannon you have been misinformed. Yes SIDS is sudden death without any explanation, however sids and kids have been doing research for many years and we know that SIDS is related to some sort of lack of oxygen to the infant. So a baby that dies while sleeping with its parents, dozing on the couch with dad, while breastfeeding or in a cot with toys and pillows and surfaces the baby can bury its face into, is classified as a SIDS death even though we can relate that back to some sort of suffocation. There are benefits and risks of co-sleeping and parents need to be informed of both and choose the best option for them, and yes you are right you can do all the right things and something may still happen to your baby. New parents need to be aware of the safe sleeping guidelines which you can find on the sids and kids website.
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Sids and Kids actually have a brochure outlining safe co-sleeping as well- they acknowledge that it is a practice undertaken by many parents and have sought to educate parents how to do so safely:
http://www.sidsandkids.org/wp-content/uploads/SafeSleeping_Brochure.pdf
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I understand what SIDS is, and I understand that it is the “blanket term” used to describe the death of a baby who has stopped breathing. However, it does not seem an accurate way of portraying the statistics the coroner is talking about, and I feel it would give new parents a skewed view of what would and would not cause their baby to die. A child who sleeps in a cot is not immune to SIDS, just as a baby who sleeps with their parents is not guaranteed to die.
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The statistics he is referring to is the number of babies who have died from SIDS and the percentage of those who were found deceased while co-sleeping. I am not against co-sleeping and I know it has many benefits, but what I am urging is for women to be informed of the safe sleeping guidelines and guidelines for safe co-sleeping. The coroner may have stated it a bit harshly, but i believe he was just trying to get the message across that co-sleeping carries an increased risk and it is neglectful to say that co-sleeping carries no risk and is completely safe. I would assume that the four cases Mr Olle sat on the parents had no education about safe sleeping which led to his harsh and blunt reaction. The message this article is trying to convey is that there are true and accurate statistics about co-sleeping and SIDS and there needs to be increased awareness. Mr Olle may have chosen his words wrong but there is still a very important message behind them.
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SIDS is the term used for a baby that has had a post mortem performed, for which no cause of death can be attributed.
Accidental death is the term for a baby that has had a post mortem performed, for which a cause has been identified, such as smothering by a doona etc.
SUDI is the term for a baby that has died and hasn’t yet had a post mortem performed. It is the blanket term and means sudden unexplained death of an infant.
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Beautifully said , I co-slept with both our children and there was one instance where my first vomited in her sleep but didn’t wake up thank god I did as she was in her back and I’d hate to think what might have happened if she’d been in another room! Oh and I love having them so close they now sleep with each other
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Think you need to be very careful with your assumptions here. How is it that we say ok to the SIDS guidelines where they advocate a baby sleep on its back with light weight covers ensuring NO padding/pillow/obstacle is near them which may cause suffocation. Co-sleeping – in a bed with maybe two other people, lots of covers/pillows etc. How can this not be considered a SIDS risk. SIDS can be due to no explicable reason. SIDS can also be proven to be due to suffocation!
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It is not worth the risk, no matter how sleep deprived you are! I do not do it and I have a son who is 9 months old who wakes often during the night. I juggle little sleep, with a 2 year old and a full time job. I would rather be tired than risk my children’s lives by putting them in bed with us at such young ages!
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Aren’t you risking your children’s lives by being chronically tired all the time?? As has been pointed out several times co-sleeping is not risky if you follow the safe guidelines. Driving while being chronically tired would be far more risky.
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Well you’re a stronger woman than me. I realized I was just not coping with so little sleep after an incident while out walking my son in his stroller. We were crossing the 4-lane road in front of our house and I dropped the shopping bag I was carrying. I let go of the stroller and reached down for the bag. People started tooting their horns and cars crossing the intersection the other way stopped. I just stood their not knowing what was going on. The stroller had rolled, because the road is on a hill, across the intersection and in front of the cars going the other way. He could have been killed all because I was too tired to think straight.
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We have an ‘open bed’ – we don’t co-sleep out of regular habit, but we are prepared for it when, like last night, LO needs it.
We don’t and never have let her sleep in the middle because Hubby DIES when he sleeps and this is a known factor in co-sleeping suffocations. I don’t smoke, drink or do drugs and sleep relatively lightly when DD is in our bed.
One of the reasons that we co-sleep is actually to avoid sleep deprivation – I know that after 11pm I get sloppy, make mistakes and am generally short tempered, none of which makes for good parenting. If at 11pm DD still won’t sleep it’s into bed with us. It happens only occasionally and we have a wide repertoire of sleep skills to try first. Once 11pm hits it’s time for plan “Z”, I’m still not so exhausted that I can’t cope, but have given myself a good chance of getting LO to sleep in her own space.
Anecdotally, I had read that co-sleeping can actually assist babies in regulating breathing in the newborn stage and thereby prevent possible episodes of SIDS (as opposed to smothering and suffocation which to me would be a distinctly different situation). On more than one occasion I woke with a newborn in my arms to find that she hadn’t inhaled or exhaled for ‘sometime’ (no, I don’t know know how long, but she had taken a fair pause). I would breath on her and she would take a huge breath before resuming normal breathing patterns.
By scaremongering that ‘co-sleeping will kill’, parents who are eager to do the right thing will probably be far more exhausted and thereby when they ‘give in’ and take a bub to bed the chances of smothering are heightened.
There are two other problems. The first is that SIDS should be held in distinct comparison to smothering and suffocation. They’re not the same. It should be noted that adults can die of SADS (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – thought to perhaps be of the same family as SIDS) and presumably it’s not because their blanket was over their head or they were sandwiched between Mum and Dad… The other is that like many fatal things that happen to babies before and after birth is that you can’t go back and check if another option might’ve had different results. It’s not actually possible to say that co-sleeping actually killed the child, or that half of children who died of SIDS happened to be in co-sleeping arrangements.
The long and the short of it is:
- Don’t sleep baby in between two adults;
- don’t use heavy blankets and pillows that can get stuck on top of baby;
- DON’T SMOKE, DRINK, DO DRUGS and co-sleep;
- If you are severely sleep deprived GET HELP regardless of what your sleeping arrangements are!
- If you plan to co-sleep consider either a side-car arrangement (so good!) or a adult bed insert.
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“Anecdotally, I had read that co-sleeping can actually assist babies in regulating breathing in the newborn stage and thereby prevent possible episodes of SIDS ”
This is true, however it is also true of a baby just being in the room with you in their own cot/bassinet etc. That regulate their breathing to the parents but they don’t need to be IN bed together to do so.
I’ve often wondered if this would be true of a sibling-shared room too?
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Curious, to reduce the risk of bad things happening to our babies, we take vitamins during pregnancy and stay away from banned foods. Then we install the safest car seat, fence our pool and baby proof the house on the advice of professionals, again to reduce the risk of harm to the baby. Then, when given graphic advice that sleeping with the baby compromises the baby’s health we think we know better and can defy this advice and keep our baby safe. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. But for heavens sake, if we stay off cheeses while pregnant in the faint fear of some form of toxic poisoning then seriously, we should heed the advice of those who have dealt with dead babies, suffocated by well intentioned parents.
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We live in an extremely risk averse society. The chances of being in a car crash that kills you’re child is actually higher than getting food poisoning which kills your child. Likewise, taking vitamin supplements makes us feel like we’re doing our best for our childs earliest development, but in actual fact if your basic diet is deficient in those vitamins and nutrients then you should spend your time, money and energy on fixing that, rather than taking a supplement. In the same way, safe co-sleeping following the guidelines is no riskier than sleeping in a separate bed. It makes us feel that we’re doing the best when we ‘obey the rules’ but when it comes to SIDS (food poisoning, car accidents, having the right balance of nutrients in our diet), unless we are being deliberately reckless and thoughtless of our children, if something bad is going to happen, there’s a good chance that it was going to happen regardless of what we do or don’t do.
Having lost a child after doing all the right things I can tell you that sometimes crap just happens.
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I’m sorry for your loss.
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If parenting advice was consistent, then your argument might hold more sway with me, but the ‘best advice’ has changed so many times, and is different depending on where you look that it is not a simple matter of ‘follow the advice’ and that will reduce the risks.
Well intentioned doesn’t mean well informed, and I know plenty of ‘well intentioned’ people who make decisions about their children based on faulty arguments or ignorance. There is a difference between those well intentioned people, and parents who make informed, considered decisions based upon a review of ALL the available information – not one persons belief or perspective.
By the way, my babies were at a high risk of having the same serious heart condition that I have. I was advised, by a leading pediatric cardiologist to co-sleep with my babies as it has been proven that breastfeeding mothers who co-sleep actually breathe in sync with their babies, and my doctors felt that it was the safest option for my babies. The best advice for me was not the best advice for someone else. My babies are now 5 and 3 and sleep in their own beds all night.
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I think a distinction needs to be made between “co-sleeping” and “bed-sharing.” Cosleeping refers to sleeping with in sensory distance of each other. My son coslept in a bassinet next to our bed.
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My son slept with me and the only slightly negative thing to have happened is that he is nearly 3 and STILL sleeps with me….
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Ii was only able to get my son out of the bed when my baby girl came! He was almost 4! I wouldn’t of changed a thing though.
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this brought with it an awful flashback.i had given birth the day before.half sitting up in hospital bed feeding my now 18 year old son.woke with a start to the nurse saying goodness you are asleep.was still holding him.i tremble to think what may have happened in other circumstances.this is a warning.take it as such.children precious.sleep deprivation and cosleep dangerous.
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Co-sleeping isn’t for everyone, but as a single mum I have been doing it from the very start and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wake so quickly when he stirs that every feed is a dream feed at night, meaning no re-settling and a total awake time of maybe 15 minutes for me. At three months old he independently goes to sleep, dream feeds at 10 and then usually sleeps until 7/730 (unless he’s sick, as he is now and wakes up for a feed at 3). I am not sleep-deprived, I enjoy him all day long and rarely feel frustrated, as a lot of mums of bubs the same age seem to feel.
And really, isn’t an emotionally strained, sleep deprived mother much more dangerous than safely sharing a bed?
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We ended up doing it (rather than following any kind of philosophy that encourages co-sleeping) too, Caitlin. I wouldn’t if her father was around though. She always starts in her cot and then ends up in with me for part of the night. Sometimes back in her cot (next to my bed) for the majority, sometimes not. Definitely wouldn’t happen if it was with anyone else in the bed though.
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This is well worth a read – research from the University of Notre Dame
http://cosleeping.nd.edu/what-every-health-professional-should-know/
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Rach L – that was great. So practical and sensible
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The South Australian Coroner issued the same warning, I think it was last year? on the same thing after a number of tragic deaths of babies that were co sleeping in beds and even on couches with exhausted parents.
It’s quite frightening really, when many of us have done it just out of sheer tiredness.
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My husband is a police officer and earlier this year was called to a devastated family where the Dad had fallen asleep in bed with the bub – only a few weeks old and no one was getting much sleep, they’d brought the bub into bed to feed and settle and all fell asleep. When they woke up the baby was dead. Tragic for all concerned. We’ve finished our baby making years, but I think we’d both be too scared to bring baby into bed again after that.
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This is tragic Vegas, but also an example of an unplanned co-sleeping arrangement, so the parents were unlikely to have properly prepared their bed for baby to sleep safely in it. A good example of why safe co-sleeping guidelines should be promoted, rather than just issuing these hype-filled warnings.
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Bec, the Age report is stating that the coroner’s finding was that the “vast majority of parents who lost babies had been sleeping with them habitually before the deaths”.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/coroner-warns-of-sleeping-with-baby-20120706-21mn4.html
This is not a hype filled warning, it is a well considered warning from a review within the Coroner’s office, whose aim is to reduce the incidence of preventable death.
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Thanks Sally, I admit I did miss that point.
But I will stand by my point that rather than issue blanket warnings, it would be much more useful for safe co-sleeping guidelines to be promoted.
It is the natural sleeping state for mother and baby, so mothers are not going to stop practicing it, but we all need to be educated on how to practice it safely.
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I disagree, Bec. It is one thing to promote safe sleeping practices, but many parents cannot imagine or understand how easily tragedy can unfold and make many assumptions about what is OK in sleeping practices. Sometimes it is necessary to explain exactly what not to do. When a baby is very young with a large, heavy head that they cannot control, it is very easy to obstruct a baby’s airway. They cannot move strongly enough to correct this obstruction and they also cannot cry with an obstructed airway so there is no warning.
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I agree with Sally and Anon Bec, one thing to have a bassinet in the room with child safely swaddled another to put it in the parents bed with pillows blankets and large adults in deep sleep…
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The article states that ‘up to half of the babies’ that were deceased were sharing a bed with their parents. Doesnt that mean the other half were in a crib? Just wondering.
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Absolutely Diana!
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It’s highly possible that some others were incorrectly seated in a car seat.
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I have co-slept with 3 babies and as in the first response here I breast feed and leave my arm under the babies head and neck and curl my legs up to provide a base so the baby won’t slip down.
I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone but I couldn’t do it any other way.
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I wonder if there has been a study on this as (anecdotally) that seems to be the instinctive protective position that every breastfeeding mother adopts when co-sleeping?
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Yeah, I have seen it referred to that there have been studies done on cosleeping Mums and Babies and the Mums all go into this position unconsciously.
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Yes. There was a study done in the UK on this very point (mothers instinctively making a “protective cocoon” when they co-sleep with their babies). In the same study/ report I saw, it was noted that babies who co-slept had higher levels of serotonin than their counterparts who slept in their own bed in another room and, furthermore, that a drop in serotonin was a common denominator in babies that had died from SIDS. Also highlighted was the fact that Asia has one of the lowest (if not the lowest) incidence of SUDI in the world and yet co-sleeping is the most common way to sleep. I’m going to see if I can find a link to the study and will post it here. It was a scientific study using statistically significant research – and I am sure was touted as something of a breakthrough as far as SUDI was concerned.
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Very interesting…
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I do not co-sleep except for a little light nap in the morning occasionally now that my baby is 6 months. I find it hard to relax with a tiny baby in my bed – because I am worrying about them suffocating!
In saying that, I do find it confusing that I constantly hear (mainly on this site – no references sorry so maybe it’s not true!) that there is no such thing as SIDS in many countries where co-sleeping is the norm, yet in Australia it is a dangerous activity.
I would be interested to know whether these co-sleeping deaths mainly occur when the risk factors are at play like drunk or drug-affected parents, smoking parents, sleeping on a couch etc. Or is suffocation just as likely to occur in a bed with a sober parent.
I find the language used by the Coroner and news.com.au confusing as well, because it seems to equate suffocation with SIDS, whereas “SIDS is the sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history. (Willinger et al, 1991).” This is not the same as suffocation.
I do realise that a risk of suffocation is just as bad as a risk of SIDS of course. I just think SIDS and suffocation have been put together as one and the same by news.com.au here.
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Mooner, the points you raise are so valid!
There is indeed a difference between SUID and fatal sleeping accidents like suffocation.
This article also fails to draw a difference between safe and unsafe cosleeping arrangments. e.g. how many of the deaths were the result of drug/alcohol affected parents, or of parents co-sleeping on a sofa or bean bag. There are so many variants!
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You may find some points to help explain it here at the Univeristy of Ntre Dame website. Co-sleeping is not necessarily dangerous, but there are guidelines to follow like NOT doing it on couches etc.
http://cosleeping.nd.edu/what-every-health-professional-should-know/
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It is important to look at the differences between western and Asian sleeping arrangements esp, the type of bedding. Generally in typical Asian bedrooms where they cosleep you find hard futon style beds, small pillows-if any, often no blankets or duvets. You will often find a far more conservative attitude towards women drinking or smoking. The trouble is we want to do it half way and adopt a practice without really understanding all the factors.
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One more evidence based response to this article from the ABA:
Breastfeeding and co-sleeping mutually support each other. The convenience of co-sleeping for breastfeeding at night is the reason parents most commonly give for choosing to co-sleep.9 Mothers who bed-share with their baby tend to breastfeed longer and maintain exclusive breastfeeding longer than those who do not co-sleep.10–12
Breastfeeding is protective against SIDS. Further protecting her baby, a breastfeeding co-sleeping mother usually adopts a position that facilitates close physical contact and observation of her baby.13,14 She tends to keep her baby at the level of her breast with an arm between her baby’s head and the pillow. She also instinctively bends her legs completing the protective space around the baby, making it impossible for another person to roll onto the baby without first coming into contact with her legs.15,16 A breastfeeding mother who co-sleeps with her baby (and is not affected by alcohol, sedating drugs or extreme fatigue) also tends to be highly responsive to her baby’s needs.17,18 Studies show more frequent arousals in both mothers and babies when they co-sleep, and some researchers have suggested that this may be protective against sudden unexpected infant deaths.19–21 Babies are checked by their mother and breastfeed more frequently when co-sleeping than when room-sharing.22,23
(You can view the references at the source: https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bfinfo/breastfeeding-co-sleeping-and-sudden-unexpected-deaths-infancy )
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SIDS is horrible but this is scaremongering. If half of all SIDS deaths occur whilst cosleeping, that would indicate that half occur whilst NOT cosleeping?? So, there’s no increased risk, just the same risk? I think there needs to be some balance to this article, rather than scaring already sleep deprived mums. I really feel that as mothers, the idea that it takes a village to raise a child is imperative, and not this more recent epidemic of “if you don’t parent the way I do you are wrong”. Reminds me of high school bitchiness all over again. How about we all reach out and support each other, rather than this “my way is better than yours, so you’re a crap mum” rubbish that is becoming so overwhelming on women’s online networks.
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I agree. This Coroner seems to be speaking from an ivory tower without any understanding of caring for a baby. Any parent knows that babies sleep deeper and longer in the body warmth of their parents, and in previous eras when heating in all rooms was not a common domestic occurence, co-sleeping would have been the only way to keep baby warm in colder months/climates.
“I am satisfied sharing a sleep surface with an infant is an inherently dangerous activity.” This is a damning statement. This article lacks crucial detail as already pointed out by others, does not provide practical advice and serves no purpose beyond alarming parents.
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Making statements from an ivory tower without any understanding of caring for a baby??!! How about you consider that you are speaking only from a single person’s viewpoint, along with some friends and family, whilst the Coroner has information available to him about every infant death in the whole state (and almost certainly the whole country). The argument ‘I did it and my baby is fine therefore it must be OK’ is so dangerous and ill-informed. It seems very similar in logic (or lack thereof) of saying ‘I was smacked as a child and I turned out OK’ or ‘We never wore seatbelts as kids and we’re still alive’. I’m not calling you a child abuser – just pointing out that many people are defending this practice because their babies are OK. Individuals do not have the statistics about child deaths available to them to make such absolute conclusions – the Coroner does. Mia – you are usually so sensible – why are you not weighing in about this nonsense? I starting reading this article, thinking finally, hooray, only to discover it was actually a criticism of the coroner (at least by Bec, in the comments section). Shame on you – where’s your usual attitude of baby’s safety comes first? This is no different. You can have a homebirth and nothing bad might happen to you – that doesn’t mean it isn’t more dangerous. You can bedshare with your baby and nothing bad might happen – doesn’t mean it’s not more dangerous. I’m an anaesthetist and I can attest to how fragile and vulnerable a baby’s patent airway is. To all those Mums who sleep with their arm outstretched between the pillow and the baby? All it takes is a tiny bit of pressure from your arm onto the top of your baby’s head to tilt their head forward and obstruct their airway. It only takes 5mins of airway obstruction for a baby to die. It is NOT WORTH IT. And before I get comments about scaremongering – this is reality. There are many, many families out there who no longer have their precious babies, who were not drunk or drugged, just normal adults sleeping in a normal way. The Coroner’s finding is long overdue, and the next thing needs to be slings – babies die in those too. Remember – when your baby was scrunched up like that in utero, they didn’t have to breathe – they had an umbilical cord. So dangerous.
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I think if slings are used correctly the baby is not ‘scrunched up’ and they are safe to use.
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Maybe we should keep our babies safely in cots all the time and only take them out to be fed, there are so many things out there that could kill them.
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Yes YES to the slings. A friend of mine is a doctor and was at a school fair when a Mum found the baby she was carrying in a sling blue and not breathing. She said it was TERRIBLE as there wasn’t much she could do except keep up resuscitation until the paramedics arrived.
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Ugh, I couldn’t stand slings. Scrunched up, hot baby with no visual stimulation and lacking good air circulation. There was nothing so important that I needed to do put my daughter in one.
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The risk is only the same if half of all babies co-sleep. I think, from what I’ve read, that less than half do, so therefore the percentage of SIDS deaths is higher in those that co-sleep.
However, the things that seem to be left out of this statement, is that a high percentage (no references, just from stuff I’ve read!) of those deaths are in cases where the co-sleeping is against safe guidelines. So really, if it’s done safely, the risk is no higher. These statements seem to lump safe bed-sharing, unsafe bed-sharing and co-sleeping in an attached basinett into “co-sleeping” which doesn’t really tell us anything.
Maybe if it focused on unsafe bed-sharing being the problem as well as giving guidelines for safe bed-sharing and attached basinetts, then parents could do it safely if it meant everyone getting more sleep and felt more natural for them.
Anyway, as I said, this is all just from stuff I’ve read so not very scientific and could all be wrong.
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This is so true, I would particularly like to know what percentage of the bedsharing/co-sleeping deaths were to do with reduced consciousness due to substances ingested by one or both of the parents. I’d also like to know what the rate of SIDS is in countries where co-sleeping is the norm…
I haven’t time to look them up, but there’s also a fair bit of evidence to suggest that safe co-sleeping can be responsible for reducing the rates of SIDS (as opposed to suffocation).
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I believe Japan has very low rates of SIDS and high rates of co-sleeping, and one of the factors is the hard futon-style beds with minimal covers.
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Your understanding of stastistics is pretty poor.
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The first night home from hospital and we couldn’t get our newborn to sleep at all. He seemed happiest in his car capsule. I rang Tressillian and they said that it was okay to leave him in the capsule. So that night my husband and I slept in our bed with the car capsule perched in between us (at least for a couple of hours before he woke again).
We were determined not to bring our baby into bed with us (I can’t remember why we were so against it – probably we were thinking he’d still be there in 10 years time). So instead we endured 5 years of getting up and down to him in his cot and then when he could walk, he’d come to us many many times throughout the night.
If wish so much that we had just let him sleep with us!!
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Our response to the night time bed hopper was to put a mattress under our bed and pull it out if we got a visit at night. Sometimes she would even pull it out herself and not even wake us. Saved our sleep, she was happy and safe and secure. We started this when she was almost three and we still have it there five years later for the occasional visit. I love seeing her snuggled up the mornings she visits, all warm and feeling secure and loved.
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This is a really good response to the claims of this article: http://cosleeping.nd.edu/what-every-health-professional-should-know/
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“Sleep deprived parents are most at risk”….Please show me a parent of a newborn that is not sleep deprived!
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I agree that when done haphazardly, bed-sharing can be dangerous.
BUT, following safe bed-sharing guidelines ( http://cosleeping.nd.edu/safe-co-sleeping-guidelines/ ) it is possibe to have a safe sleeping arrangement and this has many benefits for mother and baby, such as breastfeeding, better sleep, better bonding etc etc
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I co-slept with my second baby because she was a very fussy baby and I just could not get her to settle in a cot. I was aware of the risks and tried to minimize them: no pillows or blankets, I put the baby in one of those little sleeveless sleeping bag thingies and wore warm pajamas myself, had a hard mattress and made sure the bed was pushed firmly against the wall. Also my partner slept in another room, it was just me and the baby.
There is only so long that I can go without sleep, it was either that or not sleep at all.
I think it is good to make parents aware of the risks and also how to minimize them. I don’t think it’s practical or realistic to expect all parents to stop co-sleeping.
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Good point. Sleep deprivation is pretty dangerous too!
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