I apologize for the mass blanketing I am doing with this email.  It has
occurred to me that some of you will receive this 3 or 4 times :-)

I am one of the folks in Missouri attending this safe sleep meeting
tomorrow.

I just had a light bulb moment and I want to run this by as many people as
possible.

In the breastfeeding community (not outside us—this is a very important
point) our literature, our research, our pamphlets, etc isn’t the writer
normally ASSUMING that during the normal course of successful breastfeeding,
mothers and babies ARE sleeping together?

So when we are talking with EACH OTHER, we already have some assumptions in
our head.  For example, if a mom mentions any of these things and her baby
isn’t gaining weight: baby sleeps in another room at night, or baby is
encouraged to sleep through the night, or feeding cues at night are ignored
until crying, etc----we usually see them as red flags.  If I am talking with
a professional about one of these red flags, I don’t have to make any
explanation, each of you already knows what those red flags could mean.  And
the first thing most of us do is ask where IS the baby sleeping AND let’s
talk about early hunger cues.

Let that sink in for a moment.  It seems to me that this idea of mothers and
babies being in close proximity being just a given for all of us, might be
one of the reasons why this safe sleep workgroup is having trouble hearing
us.  We see through observation and experience that mothers who keep their
babies close and nurse as needed—so that they can see the early nursing
cues, have plentiful milk supplies.  And babies that have easy access to the
breast gain weight well, among other groovy things—for baby stay healthier
and for mom delayed return of menses.

What I find very interesting about this idea of mothers and babies staying
close to each other is that many mothers setup nursing stations without
anyone telling them to do it.  Often mothers tell me their way of coping
with a newborn is to camp out in the family room and not move unless it’s to
eat or go to the bathroom.  It is so innate of an idea that people figure
out co-sleeping all on their own as a survival technique. And of course if a
mother and baby is struggling with breastfeeding we often suggest creating a
nursing station.

Outside our community of breastfeeding knowledge, people often assume that
babies aren’t sleeping with mom or that it doesn’t matter.  I think when I
say, that sleep sharing among breastfeeding mothers and babies is so basic
and common, a survival tool that mothers everywhere intuitively find and
use—eyes tend glaze over and they want to accuse us of not taking research
seriously, of not being willing to change, not taking the true risks into
consideration.

So here is my light bulb moment, what kind of analogy can we use to get this
point across?  What is example is so simple and such a given, that when we
compare XXXX to the idea of mothers and babies sleeping together-everyone in
the room gets an ah ha! moment.

Also Carol Schlef’s request for “research that supports the hormonal
connection of mothers/babies, and the sleep-inducing effects of
breastfeeding”   is really truly very urgent.  I was asked point blank to
bring this and I feel that if we can successfully answer their questions
about this, we might have a chance.  So I did want to ask the opposite
question of Carol’s, WHAT RESEARCH WOULD THEY BRING TO REFUTE THESE
CONCEPTS????????  grrrrrrrrrr So far I am coming up dry on this.  And any
thoughts you all have would be lovely.  Please keep in mind that we are
Central Mountain Time.   Feel free to call us on my cell phone, even if it’s
during the meeting  573-338-0997, which is from 10 am- 2 pm.

Time to get back to my daughter, who is having a meltdown due to the lack of
attention.  She doesn’t understand my obsession because she is convinced
that everybody knows that babies HAVE to sleep with their moms and dads.
She thinks I am making all this up!
Warmly,
Nikki Simmons
Who is representing La Leche League  at this meeting

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