Replies

I slept with my baby because that made it so easy to nurse him at night. Mothers have done this safely for 10,000+ years.

One possible hypothesis on the SIDS cases:

Maybe it’s one of those correlated-but-not-causal things. Like for instance, African-American women tend to have higher rates of gestational diabetes, pregnancy-related hypertension, and premature delivery. That may contribute to the SIDS deaths (that would be the causal part.)

But those same women may have been more likely to co-sleep with their babies because they felt the baby was a little frail and they felt co-sleeping would be more responsive and protective. To keep him cuddled-close and warm, etc.

Which is a mother’s natural and beneficial instinct to do: to stay as close to a very frail baby as she can.

So there’s a correlation, but the SIDS isn’t caused by the co-sleeping, it’s caused by the pregnancy risk-factors and prematurity.

Of course, if the baby has actually been laid-on and smothered, it could be because the mother has a drinking or drug problem which would cause the mother to pass out on the bed and not realize she’s overlaid the baby.

Heartbreaking.

Both in nursing school, and when my own kids were infants, everyone preached that you should never put your child on his back to sleep. The thinking was that if the baby happened to spit up or vomit, he could aspirate the vomitus and not be able to breathe.

I don't know when that changed--but I continue to tell my kids to put their kids on their tummies to sleep. It just makes better sense to me.

“So there’s a correlation, but the SIDS isn’t caused by the co-sleeping, it’s caused by the pregnancy risk-factors and prematurity.”

SIDS death is more likely to occur in such cases, yes. But SIDS also happens to healthy babies born to healthy mothers.