Jun 30, 2003
Co-Sleeping Is A Safe Arrangement
By JAMES J. MCKENNASpecial for The Tampa Tribune
The safety and appropriateness of mother-infant co-sleeping were recently
castigated in ``Bassinet Giveaway May Save Newborns'' (Metro, June 16).
Scientific data reveal that in the absence of known risk factors such as prone infant
sleep, maternal smoking and chaotic lifestyles, co-sleeping with nighttime
breast-feeding remains the most common and safest context for infant sleep
worldwide, and it is the only sleep environment truly designed for the human infant,
providing nourishment (breast milk) and sensory stimuli in precisely the right
amounts. If not for misguided cultural ideologies masquerading as science,
how can it be that we are not instead questioning the safety of solitary crib
sleeping (an alien sleep environment for human infants)? But it is the inherent
safety of mother-infant co-sleeping that is being challenged, the very context
within which the infant's breast-feeding and falling asleep evolved. Was
there not a Consumer Product Safety Commission paper published in 1999,
summarizing 20 years of infant deaths, which showed that 92 percent of 2,178 infant
deaths by suffocation occurred while infants slept outside the supervision of an
adult caregiver? Sudden infant death syndrome and suffocations unfor tunately
occur in all sleep environments. The question is: What factors within each
increase or decrease risks? Claudia Mahoney claims erroneously (as there exists
none of the right kind of data anywhere needed to calculate it) that solitary
infant crib sleeping is safer by a factor of 20. Yet, two recent epidemiological
studies published in refereed journals suggest that infants' sleeping alone
is a significant risk factor for SIDS. One study conducted by Peter Fleming and
Peter Blair in the United Kingdom and the other by Ed Mitchell in New Zealand
show that babies sleeping alone in cribs in rooms by themselves have twice
the chance of dying from SIDS compared with infants co-sleeping with their
mothers, going in and out of their mother's bed or sleeping in a crib next to the
bed. The SIDS Global Task Force Childcare Research Team recently published
another study. It shows that in the absence of maternal smoking, cultures within
which bed-sharing rates are the highest are associated with the lowest SIDS
rates per 1,000 live births, compared with Western cultures in which bed-sharing
rates are low and SIDS rates are relatively high. Crib deaths are not thought
of as being ``preventable'' in the same way that every co-sleeping death is
assumed to be preventable - and that is by getting rid of it. Investigators look
for specific hazards surrounding the crib or crib use and do not blame the
crib or solitary conditions. In contrast, co-sleeping deaths, without reference
to specific causes, are used as proof that any or all co-sleeping kills,
regardless of circumstances. Investigators blame the deaths on co-sleeping rather
than identifiable specific factors associated with the co-sleeping. The
Consumer Product Safety Commission recommended against co-sleeping in 1999, but
thousands of physicians, scientists, parents and SIDS researchers - including one
of the safety commissioners - disagreed. Commissioner Mary Gall wrote in USA
Today on Oct. 21, 1999: ``Philosophically, I am troubled by an official report
in which the agency instructs mothers on whether they should be `co-sleeping'
with their children. ... Specifically, I am unable to find a defective consumer
product identified in our study as a causation of this hazard. Quite simply,
there wasn't any product, defect or jurisdiction - just babies sleeping with
their parents. The only peril I detect in this particular episode is
overreaching by a federal agency.'' The writer is the director of the Mother-Baby
Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., and
a member of the SIDS Global Task Force Education Committee.
This story can be found at: <A HREF="http://tampatrib.com/News/MGAOEE9QGHD.html">http://tampatrib.com/News/MGAOEE9QGHD.html</A>
Cindy Fagiano
Peer Breastfeeding Counselor
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