Any Co-Sleepers Out There?

[Anonymous]

PP-you are misinformed and the 2 anecdotes on unhappy co-sleeping families dont represent the entire co-sleeping community anymore than 2 unhappy crib sleeping families represent the solitary sleeping community! also, it is infact true that the majority of the world, countries with high populations -china, india, allover africa and s. america do co-sleep, and they arent plagued with SIDS or sleep disorders the way the US is. James Mckenna has dedicated his entire career to researching the prevelance of co-sleeping and the maternal/infant dyad, he's a researcher at Notre dame, here is a sampel of his work

Bedtime Story: Co-sleeping Research
By James J. McKenna

For as far back as you care to go, mothers have followed the protective and convenient practice of sleeping. with their infants. Even now, for the vast majority of people across the globe, "co-sleeping" and nighttime breast-feeding remain inseparable practices. Only in the past 200 years, and mostly in Western industrialized societies, have parents considered it normal and biologically appropriate for a mother and infant to sleep apart.
In the sleep laboratory at the University of California's Irvine School of Medicine, my colleagues and I observed mother-infant pairs as they slept both apart and together over three consecutive nights. Using a polygraph, we recorded the mother's and infant's heart rates, brain waves (EEGs), breathing, body temperature, and episodes of nursing. Infrared video photography simultaneously monitored their behavior.

We found that bed-sharing infants face their mothers for most of the night, and that mother and infant are highly responsive to each other's movements, wake more frequently, and spend more time in lighter stages of sleep than they do while sleeping alone. Bed-sharing infants nurse almost twice as often, and three times as long per bout, as they do when sleeping alone. But they rarely cry. Mothers who routinely sleep with their infants get at least as much sleep as mothers who sleep without them.

In addition to providing more nighttime nourishment and greater protection, sleeping with the mother supplies the infant with a steady stream of sensations of the mother's presence, including touch, smell, movement, and warmth. These stimuli can perhaps even compensate for the human infant's extreme neurological immaturity at birth.

Co-sleeping might also turn out to give some babies protection from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a heartbreaking and enigmatic killer. Co-sleeping infants nurse more often, sleep more lightly, and have practice responding to maternal arousals. Arousal deficiencies are suspected in some SIDS deaths, and long periods in deep sleep may exacerbate this problem. Perhaps the physiological changes induced by co-sleeping, especially when combined with nighttime breastfeeding, can benefit some infants by helping them sleep more lightly. At the same time, co-sleeping makes it easier for a mother to detect and respond to an infant in crisis. Rethinking another sleeping practice has already shown a dramatic effect: in the United States, SIDS rates fell at least 30% after 1992, when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended placing sleeping babies on their backs, rather than face down.

The effect of co-sleeping on SIDS remains to be proved, so it would be premature to recommend it as the best arrangement for all families. The possible hazards of co-sleeping must also be assessed. Is the environment otherwise safe, with appropriate bedding materials? Do the parents smoke? Do they use drugs or alcohol? (These appear to be the main factors in those rare cases in which a mother inadvertently smothers her child.) Since co-sleeping was the ancestral condition, the future for our infants may well entail a borrowing back from ancient ways.


This article originally appeared in Human Nature, October 1997.
Back to James McKenna Library

[Anonymous]

For the person that mentioned that sometimes babies are smoothered by co-sleeping cousins or parents that have been drinking alcohol, I think the whole point is that you should co-sleep safely, and if you do, you will read right from the beginning that you have no business co-sleeping if you are drinking alcohol. Also, the safest person to co-sleep next to a baby is the mother, not the father, cousin or anyone else. So you are just pointing out how to not co-sleep safely, and what can occur in that case which is the death of the infant. If a mother sleeps with the baby next to them and no pillows or blankets nearby, it is safe because the mother has a biological instinct to hear when her baby stirs or cries. No one else has that connection. I had to start co-sleeping because as some pp's have mentioned, my baby would not sleep by herself, so I found myself falling to sleep on the couch with her. This definitely didn't feel safe, so I read all the safety instructions and brought her to bed with me. It has worked out great for us, but I understand that not everyone can make it work or even want it to. And I originally did not want to sleep this way, but when you have to, then you must do it safely.

[Anonymous]

Just to chime in - we would have loved to co-sleep (and did for the first few months) but my son wasn't too happy that way. He was (and is) actually much happier on his own - a very independent baby/toddler. Has anyone else had this experience? With all of the happy co-sleepers out there, it seems like those it doesn't work out for b/c of the baby's own temperment are few and far between. I kind of feel bad (and a bit sad) that the co-sleeping didn't work for us. Luckily I am expecting #2, and we're hoping he/she will be more of a snuggly baby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really? How unusual...is it a local ER? 1-2 times a year seems pretty frequent. How often do they see SIDS cases? Isn't SIDS much more common for babies sleeping alone in their cribs?

I work at Children's Hospital and we see MANY more than 1-2 kids a year who come in dead after being suffocated in their parents bed. Sometimes it is by the mother, sometimes siblings, sometimes pillows/blankets. It is ALWAYS horrifically sad.

And yet even know this and working in the ER - there were many times I'd fall asleep while nursing. I have always thanked the heavens that nothing ever happened. And now at 19 months, we are co-sleeping regularly. But it is hard to ignore 25lbs of baby next to you when you roll over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really? How unusual...is it a local ER? 1-2 times a year seems pretty frequent. How often do they see SIDS cases? Isn't SIDS much more common for babies sleeping alone in their cribs?

I work at Children's Hospital and we see MANY more than 1-2 kids a year who come in dead after being suffocated in their parents bed. Sometimes it is by the mother, sometimes siblings, sometimes pillows/blankets. It is ALWAYS horrifically sad.

And yet even know this and working in the ER - there were many times I'd fall asleep while nursing. I have always thanked the heavens that nothing ever happened. And now at 19 months, we are co-sleeping regularly. But it is hard to ignore 25lbs of baby next to you when you roll over.

[Anonymous]

PP - just curious, how many SIDS cases do you see each year? Not sure if they come through the ER but if they do just wondering.

[Anonymous]

I don't have the exact numbers. Maybe 6-10 a year. Maybe more.

We see a lot of co-sleeping because families don't have cribs or adequate sleeping arrangements for their children - it isn't always by choice (although sometimes it is...)

[Anonymous]

I don't consider us co-sleepers (well, not with the baby anyway....the dog and cat do sleep in our bed! ), but we do let our 7.5 month old daughter in our bed if she wakes up after 4AM. On occassion, so comes earlier around 2:30 or so but not normally. If she wakes up at 2:30 one night, I let her come in bed, but if she does it the second night I know she's just trying to get to sleep with us and we let her whine until she falls asleep. If she actually is crying for something I let her come again.

ANYWAY, we don't co-sleep because I think it would be bad for our marraige. Only recently has my husband not moved to the floor when the baby is in the bed. She also gets herself into a position that somehow takes up mosts of the bed! Add the tiny dog who takes up the least room and the cat that also likes to plant himself in a horrible position....we just can't get a place for ourselves! Now that she can roll and move things off of her face he feels better. This sounds ridiculous, but I think that the story about that Panda bear who smothered her baby when she was sleeping scared him! It happened when I was pregnant and it really upset me (hormones added to that, I'm sure) and now I think that's all he thinks about. Of course a Giant Panda is....well giant....and thier babies are like the size of a stick of butter, so I think that's different! I will admit that I did fall asleep with her on my arm more than once when she was first born. I don't think there's much of a way around that....you are just so exhausted. I think that if you and your husband are both genuinely comfortable with it, that's fine. I don't think the child is the issue with this. I think it's extremely difficult to tell by the child if the family co-slept. They adjust. I will admit that many families I know who co-sleep do seem to have more difficult marraiges. Do I think that means all families who co-sleep have unhappy marraiges? NO! You can not make an assumption based on one fact or just the families you personally know. It is a personal decision, just like everything else in parenting. You need to be comfortable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP-you are misinformed and the 2 anecdotes on unhappy co-sleeping families dont represent the entire co-sleeping community anymore than 2 unhappy crib sleeping families represent the solitary sleeping community! also, it is infact true that the majority of the world, countries with high populations -china, india, allover africa and s. america do co-sleep, and they arent plagued with SIDS or sleep disorders the way the US is. James Mckenna has dedicated his entire career to researching the prevelance of co-sleeping and the maternal/infant dyad, he's a researcher at Notre dame, here is a sampel of his work

Bedtime Story: Co-sleeping Research
By James J. McKenna

My opinion is not misinformed, just different from yours. What you fail to realize is that for every article that says co-sleeping is great, there are as many experts that say it is not a good idea. I don't care whether you choose to co-sleep or not; my point was that it is best if both parents agree on which ever method you choose. Otherwise, it is a strain on the marital relationship. What was your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:also, it is infact true that the majority of the world, countries with high populations -china, india, allover africa and s. america do co-sleep, and they arent plagued with SIDS or sleep disorders the way the US is.

I think the point the PP was also making was that saying "the rest of the world is doing it," isn't a compelling reason. You don't know if these countries have SIDS or other sleep issues....many of them don't communicate these issues out to our media. Culturally, China is not going to shout this stuff out from the rooftops. They still have issues with only being permitted a limited number of children per household...and the deaths that result.

Many of these countries (Africa & China, especially) are very backwards in terms of healthcare. I don't know if using 3rd world countries as a model is an argument I would use as my defense for co-sleeping. I don't even think she was speaking against co-sleeping, just that the argument of "most of the world is of doing it" is a poor one.

If your reasoning is that it works for your family, for example, then that is a more reasonable argument.

[Anonymous]

I think the "biological Norm" reasoning is more...."this is the way human being have slept for 1000s of years" not "lets sleep like poor people in third world countries."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:also, it is infact true that the majority of the world, countries with high populations -china, india, allover africa and s. america do co-sleep, and they arent plagued with SIDS or sleep disorders the way the US is.

I think the point the PP was also making was that saying "the rest of the world is doing it," isn't a compelling reason. You don't know if these countries have SIDS or other sleep issues....many of them don't communicate these issues out to our media. Culturally, China is not going to shout this stuff out from the rooftops. They still have issues with only being permitted a limited number of children per household...and the deaths that result.

Many of these countries (Africa & China, especially) are very backwards in terms of healthcare. I don't know if using 3rd world countries as a model is an argument I would use as my defense for co-sleeping. I don't even think she was speaking against co-sleeping, just that the argument of "most of the world is of doing it" is a poor one.

If your reasoning is that it works for your family, for example, then that is a more reasonable argument.

Read "Happiest Baby on the Block". Not all examples of co-sleeping are third world, poor countries. Much of Europe does it, higher classes in South America. It is NOT something only poor people w/out cribs do.

[Anonymous]

my point was simply that this is how humans and mammals have slept with their infants for thousands of years, and that it is just a cultural construct that babies "must" sleep in their own crib in their own room though the night with no food.. It simply isnt an option for the majority of the world, and hence to suggest that all other countries are "backwards" b/c they cant afford a large home with a baby nursery, or have substandard healthcare is offensive. my husband is from one of those "3rd world" countries, and he and his family would take great offense at the notion that their choice to nurture infants and young toddlers day and night, and their discomfort with western infant practices (CIO and crib sleeping) means they are "archaic, or out of touch with what is best for an infant. my point was that to suggest SIDS is a result of co-sleeping is misinformed-there is no data that says SIDS occurs more in co-sleeping than in crib sleeping, smothering out of negligence can occur w/co-sleeping, but now you are talking about typically a parent or guardian who is a substance abuser-totally different thread. Another great read on the topic of cultural variations in baby care from an ethnopediatric perspective is "our babies/ourselves" by margaret small. clearly i like small and Mckenna and the anthropological perspective of what has been in an infants biological best interest to thrive over generations and across cultures. i couldnt agree more, this is a highly personal choice and each family must select the information that is helpful to them as they approach such important parenting issues as sleeping, feeding, schooling..but please dont suggest that all 3rd world countries and humans through time have co=slept because they are backwards and unevolved...many of my peers from other cultures find the parenting practices of infants in the US quite cruel, and these are bright, educated, sensitive human beings...to each their own!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Read "Happiest Baby on the Block". Not all examples of co-sleeping are third world, poor countries. Much of Europe does it, higher classes in South America. It is NOT something only poor people w/out cribs do.

I know. That is my point. You can't make a broad generalization that because the whole world is doing it, it must be right. There are different cases throughout the world. READ what I am saying.

By the way..."Happiest Baby on the Block" doesn't work for everyone either. My kid hated swaddling and shaking.

You guys keep stamping your foot that it's your way because an expert said so. I'm trying (with no luck, apparently) to say that different methods work for different people. I am not arguing against co-sleeping... just poor arguments. I was trying to say that the best thing is to work it out between you and your spouse and find what works for your family.

I'll drop it. Clearly it's just making you guys upset. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the "biological Norm" reasoning is more...."this is the way human being have slept for 1000s of years" not "lets sleep like poor people in third world countries."

People also laid babies on their bellies for thousands of years. You guys aren't lawyers, are you?