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Comment by lars512 | Hacker News Reader

My brother and his wife did not sleep train their boy and co-slept with him. They had endless issues with sleep that continued past 2y old, were constantly exhausted, and eventually alternated who slept with him. We sleep trained our boy, same age, had very few issues even from very young.

Children are so different, from so early, it's not at all obvious what outcome for a particular kid is because of different strategies taken and what comes from their individual natures, or other aspects of their environment.

Co-sleeping's known to increase the SIDS risk, so it's another reason people are sometimes reluctant to do it, even if it would make the baby more comfortable.

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The SIDS risk being parents rolling on top of and crushing / asphyxiating the baby. We just gloss over most of this sort of death by calling it SIDS to avoid having to charge the parents with a crime.

Do you have children?

I'm convinced most of the issues with rolling on babies is people who take medication or drink. Maybe I'm wrong.

SIDS is totally different.

I believe those cases are included in SIDS statistics. I can’t find it but NPR had a long informative show with a doctor talking about SIDS, she mentioned that if you take out overweight/drunk parents the risk of SIDS from co sleeping is actually very low

EDIT: Another important factor is where the sleeping occurs. A bed is very safe, a couch is not. She pointed out that an exhausted parent lying down with the child for an intentional nap is much better than them falling asleep sitting up on the couch.

You would be wrong. I suppose it's anecdata but a member of my family who works in pedatrics sees this regularly unfortunately. Usually it's these new-age parents that think co-sleeping is somehow beneficial. You fall into a deep enough sleep, it takes almost no time at all to seriously injure or kill your child.

Frankly, co-sleeping with a baby is irresponsibility of the highest form. It may have worked for the GP but for every one that it works, another 100 show up to my family member's office or to the morgue. There's no conspiracy in why part of the "how to handle a baby" guidelines they give new parents is "never, ever, EVER co-sleep". Its far safer to assume that the new parent is not in the less-risky population and will in fact eventually cause their child's death.

I coslept with all 7 of my children.

And you'd maybe need to do it with 700 more to kill one, but it's still a pretty substantial risk. They have bedside basinets where you can still drape an arm over - it seems like a good tradeoff to me.

The downvotes are by new age pseudo-intellectuals that frequent this forum. Congratulations. Medical science says you're not smart.

Nearly the entire world except America and Western Europe "cosleeps" with their babies. And this has been happening for thousands of years. Unless you are morbidly obese(which again quite a lot of Americans are), you won't accidently kill your child while sleeping.

I've had to roll my wife off of our dog before, and she doesn't take sleep medication or drink. The dog would have been able to protest enough to get her to stir on her own, and probably has - I was just coming to bed at the time.

A baby would not have been able to. Some people are hard sleepers, and even if you're usually not you probably still have days where you are.

parents ARE charged with a crime when they crush / axphyxiate the baby to death.

SIDS happens also when baby is alone in bed. You relating it to parents rolling on baby tell me you don't know much about the argument.

LOL, every parent has a different set of anecdotes! We had sleeptime issues as well as a number of our friends. We did a gradual approach where we sat in a chair nearby the bed, then gradually moved the chair away, over about a week. Everything was fine after that.

I'm not sure if you're arguing for or against it, but for those who don't know, this is at its core sleep training. It doesn't require a parent to just throw their child into a crib, slam the door, and put in ear plugs. Anyone who ignores the needs of their child is cruel. That said, sometimes a child's needs are met and they just need to learn to go to sleep without someone patting their back.

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