I meant to send this to Ruthy privately, but didn't save her address when I
deleted my lactnets. Sorry.
This is from a letter I wrote as MediaWatch Coord.  Ruthy, maybe you could
use some of this:

I am writing about the article in the February 1997 Reader's Digest by Leslie
Smith Dow.  In
"Don't let these happen to your child," Dr. David Smith, medical director of
the emergency
department and pediatric clinic of British Columbia's Children's Hospital,
admonishes parents
that "children should be in their own beds.  Period." This is unreasonable
advice.

I realize that children can get trapped between mattresses, suffocate in
water beds, or be rolled
on by a parent.  Most of these situations occur when either the baby is left
alone in the adult bed
or with the father who may not be as tuned in to the baby, or when the
parents are medicated or
intoxicated.

I feel it is far more dangerous to let a baby sleep alone.  You report that
in Canada at least 20
children have died since 1981 while sleeping in adult beds.  How many do you
suppose died in
cribs alone since 1981 due to SIDS, accidental strangulation, choking, or
respiratory arrest with
the parents oblivious in a room down the hall?  Which is the riskier
practice?  I feel you did not
present the whole story.

The incidence of SIDS has been around 1-2 per thousand, so multiplying that
rate by the
population and over a 15 year period, it's likely that the number of SIDS
deaths since 1981 have
been staggeringly higher than 20.  Of all these SIDS deaths, I think it is
fair to say that the vast
majority occurred while baby slept in his own crib (not to be glib, but it's
called crib/cot death for
a reason).

"Safe from SIDS" by Katy Koontz, Parenting, August 1996 discusses ways to
reduce risk of SIDS
and includes co-sleeping and breastfeeding as recommendations.   Sidebars on
current avenues
of research are presented, as well as an article by Paula Price DeJoie who
tells her story of
losing a baby to SIDS and why she believes co-sleeping is important.

James McKenna, PhD, has done much of the research on co-sleeping, especially
as related to
SIDS.  One of the things that he mentions is that the carbon dioxide exhaled
by the mother helps
to stimulate the baby's respiration, with babies sleeping near their mothers
receiving an optimal
percentage of carbon dioxide.  He also discusses how infants sleep more total
time but spend
less time in deep sleep (from which they are hard to arouse) when sleeping
next to the mother.
Mothers also spend more time asleep, although they have more short little
arousals, when
sleeping with the baby.  He states that you "cannot understand what
constitutes normal infant
sleep until you have studied infants sleeping next to a parent and
breastfeeding."

I think the more prudent recommendation would be to encourage breastfeeding
and co-sleeping,
with the mother sleeping between the baby and the father.
Laurie Wheeler, Rnc, Mn, Ibclc