We tried this (our daughter is almost 6 months old) but every bloody doctor, nurse, family member etc. that we discussed this with put the every living terror in us about accidentally killing her.
The baby slept well, we did not.
The baby slept well, we did not.
* Hey, you no longer have enough milk! Try giving some more integration with artificial milk.
* You'll end killing her because of co-sleeping!
* Co-sleeping will increase chances of SIDS!
* Let her cry, otherwise you'll always carry her in your arms!
* <Other bad advices here>
And so forth. My advice is: don't listen to them, they tell you this with good intentions, but the reality is, for a shitload of years since we exist small babyes co-sleeped with their mothers. This is how it's supposed to work.
A scientifically-minded person should not prefer random internet commentators to doctors' when the sole argument proferred by the former is that things used to be a certain way, therefore it's ok.
It would be hard to study causality in this instance because of medical ethics. You cannot assign a treatment that you believe to be more likely to cause an infant to die, so RCTs are impossible in this domain.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPediatrics/164... -- co-sleeping babies are 21.7 times more likely to die from SIDS than non-co-sleeping babies, according to this study. That definitely doesn't prove causality. But the correlation is certainly waggling its eyebrows suggestively in causality's direction.
There are parents that co-sleep because they are disorganized, drunk, and so forth, not even able to put the children in their bed. That's the reason why probably there is no causality.
It's not a great argument necessarily, but people accept additional risk of injury to their kids all the time if the benefits outweigh the risks.
Certainly the default position should be that medical professionals know what they are talking about for folks who are not inclined to do the actual research.
In general I agree with you. When you're faced with a large amount of literature from many doctors and specialists in the field you should be able to assume that someone has done the research, and that most of the medical profession agree.
It'd be great if more people could read and understand research. But we're stuck with sub-optimal reporting, and people struggling to understand what is really meant by "50% reduction in risk" or "20 times less likely to die".
Having said all that: Here's an off topic rant.
There are very many examples of doctors not using scientific method but relying on their "expertise".[1]
This has caused significant harm to many people.
Doctors tend not to talk about stuff that is obvious nonsense, and a lot of their interventions sound plausible. But that's the sneaky danger! We know woo is woo, and if people want to fund research into it good luck to them. But for things that sound plausible? That's exactly when we need good research, because common sense and expertise is fallible.
This isn't from doctors trying to deceive people. It's from good clinicians who are not aware of their limits.
[1] A great example is "Arthroscopic Knee Surgery No Better Than Placebo Surgery", from about 2000.
Hell, if you do the research there are plenty instances of people punching their sleeping partner in the face during sleep, because they were having a dream (I almost did it once, with my fist landing right next to my girlfriend's head in her pillow. I thought I was having a fist fight, but I was dreaming)
So, could a human kill a baby by sleeping with it? I don't know. Could a swallow carry a coconut?
Weight/mass has very little to do with it. The baby is never 'crushed' it is 'smothered'.
Also when you smother a baby (accidentally or intentional) it squirms. So common sense would indicate the key factor is how heavily you sleep, and how easily could you role onto the baby.
If the babies head is the same level as your head, the chances of rolling on top, would require some pretty intense dreaming.
Knocking a baby off the bed is very unlikely to kill a baby (they are in a relaxed state, and have flexible bone structure/skull).
Research indicates co-sleeping is dangerous when the adult has consumed alcohol or drugs (i.e is sleeping very heavily).
I can set 5 alarms and hear none. I only wake up at the end of a sleep cycle, no matter what's happening around me.
I just bought a new mattress and I can say for sure, after having slept on a $100 target futon for the past 2 years, that I'd not know if a baby was underneath me on this one...
If you actually look into the research instead of offloading your opinions to the experts, you'll see that the SIDS research is not well done. As I recall, the work on which this AAP decision was based included sleeping in a couch and sleeping while intoxicated - not exactly best practices. SIDS is basically just a catch-all term for "we don't know what killed the baby".
That would also be a terrible argument. To name just one example, shaken baby syndrome still exists.
> If you actually look into the research instead of offloading your opinions to the experts
I've briefly looked into the research, and it seems to mesh pretty well with what the experts are saying. Now you are saying that it "isn't well done". That may be true. But I'm not seeing anything that shows co-sleeping to be equally safe with a crib in the same room. So I have a few possibilities: all the experts are wrong and all the studies that are being done on the issue are defective. Or, SIDS is probably somewhat related to co-sleeping. Unless there is some more evidence that I'm not seeing, I'm going to have to assign the latter a higher probability of being true.
Also, let's face it, part of the reason people offload opinions to experts is that experts are trained in analyzing and processing data in their domain to a greater degree than non-experts. There needs to be some pretty compelling evidence to override their views.
http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3666
TLDR: In this study, SIDS was more likely if the co-sleeper had ingested drugs/alcohol, if the sleeping occurred on a couch, or both. Sober co-sleeping on a bed was as safe or safer than not co-sleeping.
(Just to play devil's advocate) Yes, but one can surmise an evolutionary reason for that - a colicky child is more likely to be the victim in that scenario; likewise, a colicky child is less likely to be healthy.
A better argument may be that prior to 'modern' medicine, bassinets (or an analog) were spontaneously popularized in various cultures -- (if that's true).
> all the experts are wrong and all the studies that are being done on the issue are defective.
Many doctor's groups positions, when confronted with inconclusive evidence, tend to (rightfully) stand on the side of caution. A great example is caffeiene (as well as many other foods) in pregnancy. Little evidence for harm, but its possible. So its a little less harsh than all experts being dead wrong and studies defective; more likely all experts playing it safe and studies inconclusive (if that is the case).
(/devils advocate)
But the fact is, being a doctor doesn't make you an expert in nutrition or diet, and it certainly doesn't make you an expert in things like co-sleeping.
I'm pretty sure the only deaths you'll have these days as a result of co-sleeping is when one of the parents smoked, took drugs or was obese (and usually a combination).
I know this looks odd but I know first-hand people working inside the hospital and I got internal acknowledges about the fact that hospitals received pressurs in the context of breastfeeding once they started to encourage it too broadly. Artificial milk is a 50$/week tax they are able to get from most newborns for months.
We also had a close shave with the milk thing, but there are also now experts who help with and promote breast feeding. But the "standard docs" are rather quick with "just add artificial food". Even though they should now that it's better for the immune system to be breast fed (there actually is research on that).
For us, we had to do it at around 4 months or we would have been in serious trouble. 4 months of averaging 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep per week was wreaking havoc on our lives, and no one (including baby) was happy. The only way she would ever sleep is in our bed next to mum, and this was not sustainable, and terrified us every single night.
We read all of the no-cry sleep methods, and ferber. We realized that we were essentially doing all of the no-cry methods already (swaddle, side sleep, white noise, pick-up and soothe immediately, co-sleep, cradle at the side of the bed) and we tried each one for weeks.
None of it worked. At all.
For the Ferber method, you only leave the child for a few minutes at a time and gradually increase it. In our case, she was never left alone for longer than 10 minutes (we couldn't do any longer) and we did it over weeks and as gradually as we could. Now she sleeps in 4+ hours segments regularly which, to us, has been a god send.
To each their own. No one method is foolproof as all babies are different and I've learned through this that I no longer trust "experts" or anecdotal evidence. I will use it as a guideline, but adjust based on my own observations. I don't think any other approach works.
The reason is probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome - no one is exactly sure why some babies dies without a visible reason, but there are some correlations.
Sharing a bed with parents or other siblings may increase risk for SIDS, but the mechanism remains unclear
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20148046 The risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) has fallen dramatically in the "Back to Sleep" era; however, half the cases now occur when the infant has been sleeping in bed with another person.
The simple fact was that she needed to be close to Mum.
Things are better now, but it honesty felt like we were all going to drop dead at around the 2 month mark. I've never been so exhausted in my life.
When I had my first son my wife and all nearly killed each other due to lack of sleep, we would take shifts so there were a pair of eyes on him always. At least until he was around 7 months old. SIDS is real, and is not worth it.
The same thing happened when my daughter was born. Heh, well, with my baby girl I never slept. I kept an eye on her like a HAWK.
The other strict rule we had was if someone had a few drinks, the baby slept in the cot or you slept on the couch. A nurse told us that largely these smothering baby tragedies occur when someone has had a few drinks.
When we coslept with our first kid, I almost rolled over onto my daughter once - she squaked in a way that I would never be able to ignore - unless I had been medicated.
What we had and loved is a "baby bay" - basically a half open crib that docks onto the bed (on mommy's side obviously). That way the child has instant access to mommy, but you can't accidentally roll into the crib and smother her because the crib is too small for mommy.