We had just this happen a few weeks ago. A coroner in South Australia
reporting on the deaths of 5 babies. It turned out that 1 had died on a sofa
with dad, one in a bed with an alcohol affected one and one in bed with a
drug affected grandmother- no detail provided on the other two deaths. The
coroner came out saying that parents should be told never to sleep with
their baby. 
At least with our public broadcaster the journo went looking for an
alternative view and ended up on the phone to me. I was able to say that I
thought that what the coroner had said was irresponsible and unhelpful,
could result in more deaths (Peter Blair's comments on this are so helpful)
and that we need to be giving parents information to help them to make
decisions about what to do in their situation (it always strikes me as
absurd that we have info on safe sleeping that provides 3 pages on how to
make a cot safe for a baby to sleep in and one sentence on bed sharing).
In Australia, the research tells us that bed sharing is extremely common-
80% of infants under 6 months bed share at some stage. 
Karleen Gribble
Australia

To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: anti-co sleeping campaign
When a baby dies and there is an inquest, it's not uncommon for the 
coroner to make a statement reported in the newspapers that 'parents 
should be told not to share a bed with their baby' ( yes, even when 
the baby has died on a sofa) and I suspect there is, as a result, 
some pro-active pre-empting of criticism in the local policies - 'our 
healthcare workers must give out these instructions not to bed share 
so when the next tragedy occurs,  any worker asked to give evidence 
at the inquest will be able to say the mother was told not to do it.'

This transcript of a radio programme has Peter Fleming, one of the 
major researchers in this area, giving a much more nuanced account of 
the situation, and speaking out very clearly that parents should be 
told about the risks of sleeping on a sofa:

"....sofas are extremely dangerous places to fall asleep with babies. 
Sadly one of the reasons that we found in some of our studies that 
mothers sometimes fall asleep on the sofa is that somebody's told 
them not to take the baby to bed with them, so they get up to feed on 
the sofa and fall asleep there, which is 25 times as dangerous as 
taking the baby into bed."

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