Again - please email me privately with suggestions

Holiday Safe Sleep Campaign for Homeless Infants
In response to:  Child Deaths in Shelters Are Rising
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: November 29, 2007 

Throughout human history, the norm has been for infants to sleep with their parents.  An 
American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement recommends cosleeping to reduce the 
risk of SIDS because research shows that the highest risk of SIDS occurs when infants 
sleep in a separate room from their parents.  Yet many confuse coSLEEPING, which 
means the infant sleeps within arms reach of a its mother in the same room, with 
coBEDDING, which means that the infant sleeps in the same bed with the mother. To 
state that co sleeping is dangerous is not supported by the evidence.  Public health 
specialists, politicians, and the news media have a responsibility to educate themselves 
about sleep research before they make ill-informed statements equating cosleeping with 
cobedding.
 
CoBEDDING has been implicated in an increased risk of OVERLAYING when mothers suffer 
from alcohol abuse, drug abuse, smoking and obesity. The beds in homeless shelters are 
clearly not conducive to safe coBEDDING and the homeless population has a higher 
propensity for factors that increase risk of overlaying.  

To admonish a mother in a homeless shelter that she is an unfit mother if her infant does 
not sleep “alone in a crib”, however, may not succeed for both pragmatic and cultural 
reasons.  Many women in shelters may not always have access to a crib as they 
frequently move from one temporary residence to another.  In a shelter setting, mothers 
may be fearful of other residents harming their infants if they are not sleeping in close 
proximity to their infants.  Furthermore, many residents of homeless shelters come from 
cultural backgrounds where cosleeping and bedding are the norm.  

A more pragmatic public health solution would be to provide safe, lightweight, portable 
infant sleeping devices for mothers that could be placed within arms reach of the shelter 
beds.  Instead of a negative message of one more thing that homeless women do wrong, 
it would provide them with the means to safely coSLEEP with their infants, without 
coBEDDING. 
 
We urge the public health officials of NY City to find ways to provide safe coSLEEPING 
devices that would work in a homeless shelter setting.  We urge the politicians and news 
media in NY City to start assist our public health officials by kicking off a holiday 
campaign for donations of such devices.  

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