Are you sleeping with baby, is it co-sleeping? First of all, the question must be first responded to by asking… what kind of co-sleeping are you referring to?
It’s scientifically fallacious to say co-sleeping increases the chances of SIDS, especially in light of the fact that hundreds of different co-sleeping patterns exist, which vary in degrees of safety and/or benefits and outcomes associated with them.
What is sleeping with baby, is it safe?
Room-sharing is a form of co-sleeping, and it’s known that room-sharing decreases an infants chances of dying by up to 50% compared with babies sleeping alone.
But perhaps more importantly, no human infant (meaning no present living human beings) would or could be alive today had our ancestral mothers not slept next to their infants for physiological regulation, management, protection, and to breastfeed throughout the night.
It’s one thing to delineate which kinds of “co-sleeping” in diverse settings are safer or less safe or not safe at all, therein acknowledging the diverse types of co-sleeping and the need to educate parents to the known factors which increase suffocation risks or some types of SIDS.
For example, evoked by overheating, the covering of an infant’s head, sleeping on a couch with an infant or allowing other children to sleep next to a baby. But it’s an altogether different and immoral strategy to claim in an unqualified way that mothers bodies, no matter what, cannot safely sleep next to their infants, or that these bodies are inherent lethal weapons, no matter what.
Most co-sleeping cultures either have never heard of SIDS or have the lowest infant mortality or SIDS rates in the world. These co-sleeping cultures are characterised by mothers who breastfeed and do not smoke, suggesting that it is not co-sleeping that is the problem at all, but how it is practiced.
Saying without qualification that “co-sleeping causes SIDS” is the equivalent of saying that the mothers body and capacities are inherently deficient, the very body against which everything an infant can or cannot do biologically, or needs to do, is explained including infant survival itself.
This strategy and comment presently being used by medical institutions not only gets the science wrong, but it ignores contrary evidence. It dismisses any critiques of that science that claims to show that all bed-sharing is dangerous, but they attempt to pass on to the public social judgments for science. They assume and present their statements as if they are backed up by systematic studies that prove that parents are not intelligent nor capable enough to take care of the sleep environment within which they “co-sleep”.
In addition, they assume that during sleep, all parents become insensitive to their infants needs, and are incapable of responding to their infants needs or conditions. Yet scientific studies published in the best medical scientific journals contradict and refute their claims.
A double standard in assessing the causes and solutions for solitary sleeping- crib sleeping, infant deaths, and any and all forms of co-sleeping infant deaths is typically practiced.
What Are The Best Ways To Avoid SIDS?
I have studied SIDS risk factors since my own son was born over thirty years ago. In my mind, the 13 best ways to help prevent SIDS or accidental suffocation and to assure optimal infant and maternal health are:
Avoid SIDS #1: Do not smoke and avoid second hand smoke
Do not smoke during your pregnancy or after, or let people smoke in the presence of your baby after it is born. Safe infant sleep therefore begins when your baby is sleeping and developing in your womb, especially as regards how much damage maternal smoke can do to the fetal brain.
Avoid SIDS #2: Always place your baby on his or her back for sleep
Baby won’t sleep on his back? See BellyBelly’s article, Baby Won’t Sleep On His Back? 6 Tips To Help.
Avoid SIDS #3: Breastfeed if you can
Breastfeed your infant exclusively for at least six months, and for a year in general, if at all possible.
See BellyBelly’s article about how researchers found breastfeeding for at least two months halved the risk of SIDS, and breastfeeding for a longer duration offered further protection.
Avoid SIDS #4: Dress your baby lightly for sleep
This is especially the case if you’re sleeping with them in your bed. Make sure that regardless of where your baby is sleeping, that there’s no ‘stuff’ around him or her. For example, excessive blankets, heavy duvets or spreads, or stuffed animals.
Avoid SIDS #5: If not breastfeeding, sleep close to baby
If formula or bottle feeding (with no breastfeeding), sleep close to the baby at least in the same room, within sensory range, on a separate surface and not in the same bed.
Avoid SIDS #6: If bedsharing, put the mattress on the floor
If routinely bed-sharing, it would be best to pull the bed off its frame with the box spring and mattress on the floor in the center of the room. Bed frames can have gaps between the mattress and the frame (head board or foot board) into which an infant might slip and suffocate.
Avoid SIDS #7: Lower the height of the bed
Lowering the height of the bed reduces the chances of a baby rolling off a bed and getting hurt. Although, breastfeeding babies barely if at all move around in beds as they are too interested in being next to their mothers breasts with all of those good smells being emitted.
Avoid SIDS #8: Don’t have other children in the bed
Never let children sleep next to your baby; best not to have another child in the bed with baby at all.
Avoid SIDS #9: Don’t just push a mattress against a wall and assume it’s safe
Never push a mattress against a wall and assume it is safe there. Mattresses pushed against walls migrate quietly and without fanfare or notice by those in the room. Sometimes the mattress pulls away from the wall creating a gap or space just large enough to permit an infant to slip into it. It is not easy to remember to check each night to see if the mattress has slipped just enough away from a wall to pose a risk to an infant slipping between the wall and mattress and suffocating.
Avoid SIDS #10: Be mindful of bedroom furniture
Likewise be careful with end tables, or lamp tables next to the adult bed. That space could pose a risk to the infant as well. Remove close tables that might create a gap into which an infant could roll and get stuck and suffocate.
Avoid SIDS #11: Educate yourself and your partner
Educate yourself (and your partner) to all the known adverse factors associated with using a crib safely and bed-sharing, and if you are unable to remove all adverse factors associated with bedsharing keep your infant close, but on a separate surface.
Again, I call this ‘separate surface co-sleeping’ and it works just fine and is better for families who do not breastfeed their infants, or if the mother smoked during her pregnancy, or if some other adult other than the father is in the bed, or if that adult sleep partner is indifferent to the presence of the infant, or if older children are likely to come into bed with the baby.
Avoid SIDS #12: No mind altering substances
Of course drugs, alcohol, or de-sensitising medications should never be taken if sleeping in a bed next to an infant.
Avoid SIDS #13: Avoid cosleeping when excessively tired
If you or your partner are excessively tired, it’s best to have infant sleep along side the bed but not in it.
Recommended Reading
Check out Professor McKenna’s book, Sleeping With Your Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Cosleeping, which is one of our top rated baby sleep books on BellyBelly.
