Arly writes, first quoting someone's previous post about the sleep surface
and suffocation study: The study revealed an average 64 deaths per year to
babies under the age of 2 years placed to sleep in adult beds, including
waterbeds and daybeds.
and then comments:
"2500 deaths, but only 64 of them were sleeping with mom or dad?  So, if one
subtracts from 64 the number of babies killed by waterbeds and daybeds
(sofas), one comes up with a figure just big enough to show that even the
protection of co-sleeping can't prevent every infant death."

If this is the study that was published in fall of 2003, it didn't report
that the babies died while co-sleeping, but while sleeping in adult beds.
There are no figures in the study about how many babies were put to sleep in
an adult bed alone, because they were away from home on a visit, for
example.  The only cases in which co-sleeping was implicated were those
cases where the cause of death was classified as overlying by another
person, and in some of the cases it was another child.  This was NOT a SIDS
study and certainly not a bedsharing study, and whether the babies were
breastfed or artficially fed was not reported so it wasn't a breastfeeding
study either.  It was a consumer product study, showing that approved baby
beds are safer than waterbeds and sofas and armchairs and infant carriers
and highchairs, if what you want is a place for a baby to sleep with low
risk of getting suffocated.

There were a number of serious methodological problems with this study in
the first place, and those problems were PEANUTS compared with the problems
stemming from imprecise reporting about its findings - suffocation became
SIDS, sleeping in an adult bed became co-sleeping, etc. etc.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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