Michelle said:
I am a VERY proud breastfeeding mother (my baby is 14 months and still
nurses) and I strongly encourage everyone I contact to breastfeed their baby.
However, I also strongly
encourage those mothers NOT to fall asleep while nursing in bed because of
the dangers involved (overlay, falling off the bed, overheat, entrapment between
headboard and mattress).  I must also say that I NEVER slept with my baby in
bed and my baby NEVER slept on a bed.  Parents and babies should be close, but
adult beds were not made with infant safety in mind.
Michelle Eichinger, MS

Michelle,

I was a bit stunned by the emphatic statements you made about babies not
sleeping in bed with parents. I did wonder why you were so adamant about this. I
might conclude that you have much stricter boundaries of personal comfort with
risk than some mothers.  If so, I do understand that you need to respect that
comfort level and do what you need to do to be at ease with your child's sleep
arrangements.

In our breastfeeding class I neither recommend sleeping with infants nor not
sleeping with them.  I do say that some mothers do choose to sleep with their
babies and that they should be well informed of the risks of sleep surfaces,
loose bedding, mental and physical state of the adult sleepers -- the use of
drugs, alcohol and tobacco and the baby's sleep position. And I list them.

James McKenna is quoted as saying on the LLLI website, "We agree with the
authors and others that special precautions need to be taken to minimize
catastrophic accidents. However, the need for such precautions is no more an argument
against all co-sleeping and, specifically bedsharing, than is the reality of
infants accidentally strangling, suffocating, or dying from SIDS alone in
cribs, a reason to recommend against all solitary, unsupervised infant sleep." He
adds, "While specific structural hazards of an adult bed are important, the
fact that they exist means neither that they cannot be eliminated nor that all
bed-sharing is unsafe."

I derived so much ease and joy from bedsharing with my babies that I'd like
to shout it from rooftops, and the memories of their little feet on my thighs
and their warm sweet-smelling bodies curled into me are among my most
treasured, but feel it is not my place to convince mothers one way or the other, but to
support them in any decision they make.

Mardrey Swenson

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