I can confirm that Helen Ball and her team are excellent sources of 
support to us in the UK facing similar non-evidence-based scare 
tactics the prevent them from co-sleeping happily and safely.

We recently had a great study day with them.

There are crazily mixed messages all over the UK. Local health 
services can run their own campaigns, and some of them are informed 
by research and some of them all.  We have widely-distributed info 
from the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death whose message is a 
little more nuanced than it used to be, but it still does not explain 
properly in my view what can be the great benefit of co-sleeping, 
done safely, of course.  Their info is here: 
http://fsid.org.uk/page.aspx?pid=406

I see parents-to-be in classes who react with horror that anyone 
could be so *foolhardy* to sleep with their babies. 'But isn't there 
a huge risk of cot death?'  they sometimes ask me.

In the main, these are educated, non-smoking professionals. On the 
whole they don't read a lot about babycare when they are still 
pregnant, but they have absorbed that message somehow.

Postnatally, we ask very carefully if they have thought about the 
option of co-sleeping, and encourage them to speak to the midwife or 
HV and to explore the evidence themselves about what is and isn't 
safe, before they decide.

The current issue of the journal Community Practitioner 
(http://www.commprac.com)    -  articles are not online, unforch - 
has a piece about how the breastfeeding lobby and the anti-cot death 
lobby are in conflict with each other, and I would say that this is 
indeed the case.  Ker-azy.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK
-- 

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