Baby in bed: Can co-sleeping kill your child?

If you are like most Indian parents, you probably slept with your baby in your bed. Your child probably didn’t sleep separately until he or she was at least 5 or 6.

According to a new ad from the department of Milwaukee in the US, you might as well put your baby to bed with a knife. The ad features cuddly diapered babies snuggling up to scary butcher knives with the headline “Your baby sleeping with you can be just as dangerous.”

The deliberately shocking campaign was introduced to warn parents against sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) a mysterious and still unexplained cause of infant deaths. Since most SIDS babies die in their sleep, it’s also called cot death, and while no research has ever found a definite link between cot deaths and co-sleeping, the family bed has often been blamed. The controversial ad has provoked a heated debate over co-sleeping, many accusing the ad of going overboard, others arguing that co-sleeping parents need a stern wake-up call.

Meanwhile, most of us in India are probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

There are few issues that divide traditional Eastern and Western parenting as sharply as co-sleeping. We think that banishing your tiny two-month old to a separate bed, where they may cry for hours at a time, is cruel and un-maternal. Old-school parenting gurus like Gina Ford still view co-sleeping as dangerous, negligent and just plain lazy. The American Association of Pediatricians is firmly against co-sleeping, though now it advocates keeping the baby in the same room.

But new data shows that cot death research has been badly misinterpreted, blaming the family bed for the sins of parents. As the Guardian’s Sarah Bosely wrote, a recent study in the British Medical Journal found that 54 percent of cot deaths occurred while the baby was co-sleeping with a parent. “But although the risk was strong if they had crashed out on the sofa, it was only significant among those in a bed if the parent had drunk more than two units of alcohol or had been taking drugs,” writes Bosely .

In other words, co-sleeping is perfectly safe, perhaps even beneficial, if you are not a smoker, drinker, drug user, obese or otherwise incapacitated. More and more Western parents are now taking to attachment parenting, and realising that co-sleeping can often help both mother and child to be happier, maybe even safer. The research backs it up. Veteran SIDS researcher Professor James McKenna has now released new research arguing that co-sleeping actually reduces the chances of SIDS, and encourages both breastfeeding and bonding.

Also speaking out is the American paediatrician Dr William Sears, who actively promotes co-sleeping as beneficial for both parent and child, provided parents do it safely. Sears himself co-slept with five of his eight children. Among other things, Sears sensibly advises parents not to smoke, drink or do drugs, and also to avoid cot bumpers, quilts, pillows, too much bedding and overdressing their babies.

This perhaps explains why SIDS is so rare in India and Japan; mothers are unlikely to smoke, drink, do drugs or need much in the way of quilts and pillows. But the most interesting bit of research uncovered by Sears is that much of the propaganda against co-sleeping in the US is funded by the Juvenile Products Manufacturing Society (JPMA), an association of crib manufacturers. Talk about a conflict of interest.

Let’s forget SIDS for a second. For many of us weary sleep-deprived parents, co-sleeping is the only way we can stay sane. My own two babies refused to be sleep trained and vociferously howled their way into the family bed. If you are breastfeeding, it means you don’t have to get out of bed five times a night. It’s also the most wonderful, intimate experience you can have with your baby. After all, as most parents know, a baby is never so lovely and lovable as when he or she is quietly asleep.

My children moved out at about five, so co-sleeping doesn’t mean you have to sleep with them forever. And while your years of being kicked and punched may seem endless at the time, the fact is that it all passes in the blink of an eye. Very soon, your kids won’t want to be seen in public with you, let alone sleep in your bed. Why not cuddle them while you can?

“Put yourself behind the eyes of your baby,” Dr Sears said in the Huffington Post. “Ask, ‘If I were baby Johnny or baby Suzy, where would I rather sleep?’ In a dark lonely room behind bars, or nestled next to my favorite person in the world, inches away from my favorite cuisine?”

Put that way, co-sleeping makes perfect sense.