FYI 
 
Carmen Clark, LLLL, IBCLC
 
 
 
<http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Newsweek/Art/Standard_Comp
onent_Icons/nw_icon_full_logo.gif> 
The Little One Said 
In a new edition of his book, pediatrician and guru Richard Ferber
revises his stance on 'co-sleeping.'
By Martha Brant and Anna Kuchment
Newsweek
 
May 29, 2006 issue - When Mitra Kalita was growing up in New York, her
parents-immigrants from India-told her that there was something that she
could never tell her American teachers: she slept in bed with them until
she was 12 years old. In India, piling into a "family bed" did not meet
with the disapproval, even suspicion, that it did in the United States.
Kalita remembers that her father, who worked late, would often regale
her and her brothers with stories from his childhood in India as they
drifted off to sleep. "There was such intimacy," says Kalita, now 29.
"And it was the only way to spend time with him." So when she had a
child of her own, she naturally wanted to share her bed, too. Not only
did it make bleary-eyed, early-morning nursing easier, it gave the
working mom extra cuddle time with her daughter, Naya. For her parents,
"co-sleeping" had been completely normal. But at play groups around
Washington, D.C., Kalita found that many of the other moms had nagging
doubts about doing it, in part because they knew the guru of pediatric
sleep, Dr. Richard Ferber, opposed it. Even Kalita questioned her own
impulses: "I wondered if we would ever get her out of our bed."
The stigma against co-sleeping has been reinforced by generations of
parents and doctors, many of whom followed Ferber's bible of pediatric
sleep, "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems." "Sleeping alone is an
important part of [your child's] learning to be able to separate from
you without anxiety and to see himself as an independent individual,"
Ferber wrote in his 1985 best seller. He so dominated the field that his
name entered the parental lexicon. "Ferberizing"- training a child to
sleep through the night with incremental bouts of crying-provoked strong
reactions. Some call him a savior. Others, "the sleep Nazi." Ferber was
surprised by how dogmatically people heeded him. Now, in a new edition
of his book due out this week, he has omitted his statement about the
psychological consequences of co-sleeping. "That's one sentence I wish I
never wrote," he told NEWSWEEK. "It was describing the general thinking
of the time, but it was not describing my own experience or philosophy."
Solitary sleeping was the norm when Ferber's first book came out two
decades ago. But the number of adults routinely sharing a bed with an
infant more than doubled between 1993 and 2000, according to the
National Infant Sleep Position Study led by the National Institutes of
Health. The 2003 study found that in a two-week period, 45 percent of
infants spent some time at night in an adult bed. There's growing
acceptance of co-sleeping among pediatricians as well. "What ever you
want to do, whatever you feel comfortable doing, is the right thing to
do, as long as it works," Ferber writes.
Those worried that the tough-love doctor has become a mealy-mouthed New
Ager needn't fear. He still says bonding is best done during waking
hours, and he insists that co-sleepers have a plan for getting the kid
out of their bed-ideally by 6 months and definitely by 3 years. But the
fact that Ferber now accepts, if not embraces, bed sharing is heartening
to many. "I'm excited to see him coming out with a more balanced
approach," says Maureen Sweeney, 32, of Dallas, who has co-slept with
both of her children. "Now maybe people won't think we're quite so
crazy."
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), however, says bed sharers
shouldn't rest easy. While, as Ferber notes, no psychological harm comes
from sleeping together, the AAP says that there could still be great
physical harm. In a recent review of the scientific literature, the
AAP's Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) task force found that the
proportion of unexpected infant deaths occurring while bed sharing has
increased. In several of these studies, some 50 percent of sudden infant
deaths occurred when infants shared a bed with adults. They blamed
suffocation from fluffy pillows and entrapment between a headboard and
mattress, as well as SIDS. (Parental smoking or drinking and co-sleeping
can also be a deadly combination.) So the AAP came out against bed
sharing, refusing even to provide safety tips for those who ignore its
edict. "We don't know exactly how to make bed sharing 100 percent
'safe'," says Dr. Rachel Moon, a pediatrician at Children's National
Medical Center and coauthor of the AAP's 2005 guidelines. "We have a
public-health responsibility."
Proponents of co-sleeping such as James McKenna, who runs the
Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame,
say that the AAP is acting irresponsibly. "A sweeping recommendation
against bed sharing could be dangerous," McKenna says. "People will go
underground and not do it safely." He thinks many of the bed-sharing
studies are biased. In his own anthropological work he argues that bed
sharing can sometimes be safer than having the baby in a crib because
the mother is more alert to her baby. That's been true for Sweeney.
"Most of the time I wake up less than a minute before she does," she
says of her 7-month-old. "We're completely in sync." Sweeney has gone to
great lengths to make bed sharing safe; she doesn't use comforters, and
she's put her mattress on the floor. Sweeney and her husband, Paul, plan
to get a king-size soon. Katie Rocca of Sudbury, Mass., used a
"co-sleeper" that attached to the side of her bed.
For others, such machinations can be impractical and pricey. The
business of co-sleeping is booming. There is a growing demand for
products like the $50 Baby Delight Deluxe Snuggle Nest, a foam mat with
"breathable mesh" sides that the company suggests can help keep an
exhausted parent from rolling onto the baby. The AAP would rather see
people use the $150 Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper because it has a separate
sleep surface. Although the group discourages bed sharing, it does
advocate room sharing, especially for breast-feeding moms. Mitra Kalita
would have given anything to keep co-sleeping. But at about 5 months,
Naya seemed to sleep better in a crib in another room. In a partial
embrace of Ferber, Kalita has even let Naya cry it out for brief
periods. "You realize that as a family you have to come up with what
works," she says. Now, with his new edition, Ferber and Kalita agree on
one thing for sure: Mother knows best. 
 
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3a%2f%2fmsnbc.msn.com%2fid%2f12893485%2f>  
C 2006 MSNBC.com


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