Rather than educate parents on safe co-sleeping, the mainstream media loves to expose this ancient attachment parenting practice as dangerous.
A new study goes even farther to increase the statistics of infant deaths caused by co-sleeping claiming there are many “unreported sleep deaths” that are simply called something else. The author even goes so far as to stereotype all co-sleeping parents as obese drug users who are lucky their babies don’t die.
The LA Times reports:
Nurse Jennifer Combs reviewed a sample of 45 baby deaths from 2009 and found a half dozen that were sleep-related but had been called something else. Added to nine already identified, that made 15 babies dead from unsafe sleep – or one in three. The standard estimate has been one in five.
Babies had been smothered by pillows, blankets or soft items while asleep in adult beds or their cribs, or by adults rolling on top of them. Babies also died after being put to sleep on their stomachs, which raises the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This happened in families from all walks of life, she said.
What I find irksome is the reporting of Combs’ research overemphasizing the family bed over the other unsafe practices that occur in a crib. The tagline in the LA Times reads,
“Sharing adults’ bed and other unsafe sleep habits pose greater risks than most realize.”
Why only mention one specific sleep practice and be ambiguous about the others?
Combs is using this information to try and educate parents. I have no problem with that, as long as the education includes safe co-sleeping practices. Somehow I doubt that will occur when the only specific case of infant death reported in the LA Times is extreme:
In one case, a Sunrise father, 30, is serving 25 months in state prison for manslaughter for rolling on top of his 7-month-old daughter and smothering her in his bed in 2009, after an all-night session of video games and marijuana.
Of course, any infant death is tragic. It’s beyond comprehension for me, and yes, parents need to be educated. Parents need to be informed of safe practices, no matter whether they chose the family bed or the crib or a combination of both. They do not need to be scared of c0-sleeping by the media. They need to be supported in their choices.
The risks of co-sleeping decline if the mother is breastfeeding, sober, not a smoker and sleeps with the baby on a flat, safe surface free of soft items, said Linda Smith, a founder of the International Lactation Consultant Association. Also, some babies wail if put down alone in a crib, leading frustrated parents to give in and co-sleep.
“We know breastfeeding moms are going to sleep with their babies, no matter what we tell them. We have to tell them the safest way to do it,” Smith said.
Unfortunately, this message is being lost in Broward County, where Combs is doing her work.
Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies in Broward has a program for women called Mahogany and one for men that persuaded Lauderdale Lakes restaurant worker Caymen Francois, 24, to stop sleeping beside his son, Christian, now 1. The boy’s mother, Demetria Eluett, eventually made the change, too.
“I had no idea it was putting Christian at risk,” Francois said. “Sometimes it’s the only way the child will sleep, right up against the mother. But we have to break them of that habit.”
There’s no real balance of reporting here when the article concludes:
“You may have slept with your baby and it was fine, but you were lucky,” Combs said. “Things are different now. Parents are obese, they use [sleeping pills], they use drugs. Back then, we didn’t have pillow-top beds, tons of pillows and blankets. Co-sleeping is just not safe. We have too many risks.”
I am not obese; I do not use drugs or sleeping pills; I do not use tons of pillows or blankets when I co-sleep. I am not lucky. I am informed. I am an attachment parent.
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Agreed. It’s not just luck that most co-sleeping parents don’t have problems. It’s because they know how to make it safe. Scare tactics are harmful, not helpful.
Ugh, what a ridiculous case of fear-mongering. I hate when the media doesn’t distinguish between bed-sharing and cosleeping (referring to room-sharing, which is actually recommended by pediatricians), and when the media combine statistics for bedsharing-related incidents and SIDS, which is completely different and can happen in a crib or an adult bed. I LOVE sharing a bed with my children, and I hate having to defend myself to well-meaning people who read articles like this LA Times one and then try and warn me. Thank you for this well-written rebuttal – you should post a link to it on the LA Times site!
I read your post with interest and the conclusion caught my eye. It’s a good example of why this issue is so problematic – “am not obese; I do not use drugs or sleeping pills; I do not use tons of pillows or blankets when I co-sleep. I am not lucky. I am informed. I am an attachment parent.”
If these are your safety measures and especially if you have a young infant, then you are sleeping unsafely. I point that out not to be critical but to illustrate the fact that there are many intelligent, articulate AP moms who are not getting good information. I have noticed that there are many myths that are perpetuated over and over in AP circles and because we read them somewhere, they become ingrained as the group think. Because many of these myths are not evidence-based, it hurts our credibility and leads to a lot of false assumptions.
It is not easy to reduce the risk in an adult bed. It takes a *very* committed parent who is willing to sacrifice the usual comforts. As Dr. McKenna once said, it is paramount to keep in mind that the adult bed was never designed or intended to accommodate infants.
Just as in cribs, all pillows and blankets need to be *completely* removed from the sleep environment. I have heard of mothers modifying sleeping bags so that they only reached waist level; babe is in a sleeping bag type sleeper.
Waterbeds, quilted mattresses, pillow-top mattresses and anything less than firm are a no-no. The sleep surface must be flat and firm with little to no ability to compress.
Only a non-smoking mother *and* a non-smoking household should consider bedsharing.
You should have safe crib or bassinet set beside your bed for situations that you could not have anticipated and be willing to use it. That may include having to take prescription or OTC meds (cold, allergy, anti-depressants, pain, etc. – anything that can interfere with normal arousal) or a glass of wine/beer, etc.
And then there is the risk of being overly tired. That’s a difficult one. There is no denying there will be many times with a new nursling where moms *will* meet the criteria of being overly tired. Toddlers get sick, life happens and we’re often sleep deprived. With young infants I think it’s a given. In fact, pro-bedsharing researcher, Peter Blair defined being overly tired as the infant sleeping “</=4 hours for longest sleep in previous 24 hours." When I read this study, my jaw dropped. Absolutely none of my babies went more than four hours between nursing in the first few weeks.
There are more risk reduction methods but you get my point. This is hard stuff and the sad reality is most bedsharing mothers are not following evidence based risk reduction – knowingly or not, they're bending and breaking the rules while believing and reassuring each other that they know what they're doing.
I am AP but I have to admit I am frustrated. I don't see the AP community responding to this issue in a way that reflects it's values. It's rather ironic that a group who purports peaceful and gentle parenting can turn so militant, unbending and defensive when it comes to infant sleep (not referring to the blog post but what I've seen online and in person).
I would like to see more AP moms support co-sleeping (baby alongside in crib/bassinet) as a perfectly acceptable and not somehow a lesser alternative. The sad reality is that reducing the risk in the adult bed is challenging. Evidence-based risk reduction is not easy. I would much rather support co-sleeping alongside than to rationalize or ever tell a mom it's ok to compromise on their child's safety. Moreover, McKenna's research has demonstrated that a nursing pair can reap the same benefits of bedsharing (encouragement of breastfeeding, responsiveness, sensory exchange) with the baby alongside in its own, protected space.
And you are lucky. We are all lucky. 🙂 I sadly admit that I have, out of ignorance, exposed my child to risk while espousing to know more than I actually did. I consider myself very lucky that karma didn't come back to rock my world and devastate my very existence. I am very lucky indeed.
Terri- You say that those of us who cosleep are “lucky” if our babies don’t die overnight. I respectfully disagree. To be lucky is to assume that something out of the ordinary has happened. I would suggest that waking up to find your baby still breathing is hardly out of the ordinary- even at its worst, SIDS has only ever taken away a minority of babies. The SIDS guidelines are about harm minimisation: they only reduce the risk of your baby dying. As in, they take an already small risk and make it even smaller. You can follow the guidelines to the letter and there’s still a tiny chance your baby will die. Likewise, you can settle a baby in bed with an obese, drunk smoker covered in quilts and although the chances of that baby dying are much higher there’s still a far greater chance that the baby will make it through the night unscathed. (not that I recommend anyone actually do this!) For every cosleeping baby that dies there are thousands who don’t. Therefore I would argue that not losing your baby to SIDS is normal and having your baby sadly pass on is in fact tragically unlucky.
Yes, there are risks associated with bed-sharing – as there are with putting your baby in a separate room – but there are also many, many documented benefits. I would argue that every death attributed to cosleeping also includes extenuating circumstances and absolutely none happened while safe cosleeping guidelines were being followed (I haven’t researched that though so feel free to try to prove me wrong). These choices are all about weighing the pros and cons. I personally think the benefits of cosleeping far outweigh the risks and therefore those risks are acceptable.
I do agree, though, that more emphasis should be placed on non-bedsharing options. When my daughter was really little we had a bassinet and then a cot set up right next to the bed for use when I wanted a bit more room to move. It’s definitely a good option to have if you’re at all worried about injuring your little one.
Megan – I suppose “lucky” is all a matter of perspective. After birth related complications, sleep related deaths are the number one killer of infants. That fact doesn’t keep me up at night but it does cause me to take it seriously – especially when the vast majority of these deaths are preventable.
I think to a certain extent you are correct when you say that bedsharing deaths are tied to extenuating circumstances and unsafe sleeping environments. The problem is the list of contributing factors is a long one and very few parents are willing to take the steps necessary to make the adult bed safe. It’s simply not an easy thing to do. Some believe because of the way we’re accustomed to sleep in the Western world that it’s impossible.
Most of all, I’d just like to see the AP community educate itself on the research – even the research that tells them what they don’t want to hear or contradicts what they’ve heard in AP circles. For example – you asserted that there were “many, many documented benefits of bedsharing.” Really? Are you sure? Or are we so used to hearing that parroted that we now take it for granted as fact?
And if we found those benefits were somewhat negligible, would we be willing to re-examine our stance?
Good call, good call. I am definitely parroting advice from other sources that I already trust. And you are right: a lot of the information on bed-sharing (both pro and anti) isn’t systematically researched. For example, the LA Times article quoted above cited findings made by one nurse reviewing a sample of 45 cases – hardly a scientifically sound basis from which to draw broad conclusions.
A quick Google threw up this interesting meta-analysis of the research from 2007:
http://www.lapublichealth.org/mch/sids/SIDSresources/SIDS_HealthCareProfessionals/Horsely%20T_bed%20share%20rev_2007_pediatr%20adolesc%20med.pdf
It definitely highlights the need for more rigorous research in this field. It draws a few conclusions though. Bed-sharing is definitely risky for smokers but the risks for non-smokers are inconclusive. It’s also more risky for very young babies up to around 11 weeks. The only two benefits that can be conclusively stated are that bed-sharing may support and prolong breastfeeding (although it may well be that women who breastfeed are more likely to bed-share) and bed-sharing babies are more wakeful which can help prevent SIDS as they are more likely to rouse if in trouble (but can hardly be called a benefit from the parents’ perspective!!).
Interesting stuff! That being said, though, I still think it’s best to give parents choice by providing safe bed-sharing guidelines rather than simply scaring them off it. Chances are it’ll happen at some point anyway – I don’t know a single parent who hasn’t had their baby in bed with them at some stage – so it’s best to know how to minimize risk, IMO.