
Is Sleeping with Your Baby as Dangerous as Doctors Say? - jdnier
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/05/21/601289695/is-sleeping-with-your-baby-as-dangerous-as-doctors-say
======
git_rancher
The constant skin to skin contact between baby and mom from cosleeping and
breastfeeding is believed by some psychologists to contribute to baby's
healthy psychological development. Humans are highly social animals. I'm
amazed and sad it's common practice to isolate babies for such a large portion
of the day.

We coslept with our first and are now doing it with our 2nd who is still a
newborn. We're 3 weeks in and are already close to getting enough sleep each
night.

~~~
rdtsc
> Humans are highly social animals. I'm amazed and sad it's common practice to
> isolate babies for such a large portion of the day.

It's fun to watch my 1 year old son roll around in his sleep and check to see
if mom is there and then roll around around or do an arm swing and feel if I
am there all without waking up too much. At first it seemed random and then I
noticed the pattern. He was checking if we are still there, it's like a
background task running in "low power mode", probably baked in by evolution a
long long time ago.

~~~
steve_adams_86
When he finds you does he squeeze you a bit? That's my son's thing. Waves the
arm, makes contact, squeezes and pinches for a while... Then back to sleep.
It's nice.

~~~
rdtsc
Yap, but mostly when he was younger, now at 1 it is more of a slap.

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dvfjsdhgfv
> "Any women who kept an infant less than 1 year old in her bed ... is ipso
> facto excommunicated," the church declared in Milan in 1576.

I can find no source confirming this. Ipso facto means "automatically", so
this can't be done by a bishop, but only declared as canonical law by either a
Council or a pope. No trace of a Council in Milan in 1576 - the previous one
was in Trent. So this would have to be Gregory XIII visiting Milan for some
reason. I'm curious to find out who really did it and why. And whether it was
actually the church (i.e. the pope/council) or just a local bishop.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
OK, so it looks like there actually was a Fourth Provincial Council held in
Milan in 1576. Eleven bishops were present:
[https://archive.org/details/amanualofcouncil01landuoft](https://archive.org/details/amanualofcouncil01landuoft)
\- although I'm not sure how binding the decisions of this Council are (if you
live in Rome, are you excommunicated, too?). The references lead to Richard
Trexler's article "Infanticide in Florence" in _Dependence in Context in
Renaissance Florence_ which is out of print.

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szemet
We've used sidecar crib* for both our children. (first 8 months for the first
child, and then 1.5 years for the second- /our first child was a better
sleeper/).

And we've found it to be a very good compromise. Both children have slept
mostly in their crib, but occasionally if they needed, could spend some time
between us. My wife liked that she did not have to wake up for
breastfeeding...

* [https://www.google.com/search?q=sidecar+crib&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=sidecar+crib&tbm=isch)

------
faitswulff
> What's more, the practice of bed-sharing is as old as our species itself.
> Homo sapien moms and their newborns have been sleeping together for more
> than 200,000 years, says anthropologist Mel Konner at Emory University.

Hard to argue with the stats and reasoning in this article.

~~~
bunderbunder
I think I detect a tone of sarcasm, but just in case:

For the first ~99.95% of that time range, infant mortality was very high, and
then it sort of dropped like a rock. A lot of the change is attributable to
breaking with tradition.

I don't mention this by way of suggesting that everything traditional is
dangerous, so much as to say that this is one of those spots where we should
regard a simple appeal to tradition as being _particularly_ unconvincing.

~~~
EpicEng
>A lot of the change is attributable to breaking with tradition.

Is it? I thought it was due to modern medicine. Do you have a reference?

~~~
bunderbunder
Modern medicine is a result of one of those breaks with tradition -
specifically, a change in mindset from using received wisdom such as, "this is
how we've always done it" to a more experimental, evidence-based approach to
deciding how to do things.

In the spirit of modern medicine, I'd suggest that that article was chock full
of stats that should get much higher billing than a line of reasoning that's
of a kind with one of the main ones that people use to promote acupuncture.

~~~
faitswulff
My line of reasoning was "it must have been within acceptable ranges of risk
because otherwise the species would be extinct or doing something
differently," not a pure appeal to tradition. The statistics back this up,
hence my mentioning them first.

~~~
mmt
I think it's a bit extreme to suggest that the standard for an acceptable
range of risk is anything that doesn't cause our species to go extinct.

We tend to put a greater value on human life than that, even (or especially),
traditionally.

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graeme
I'm a restless sleeper. I tend to turn around a lot, and move the covers.
Would I be right in thinking this may make me as risky (or more) as a smoker
or a drinker?

I'm assuming the risk is that those groups are more likely to toss and turn.

~~~
pavel_lishin
My understanding is that the risk is that they're more insensate to the world
while asleep, and may not notice that they've rolled onto their child.

~~~
graeme
Oh I see. The risk isn't crushing the baby, the risk is being on top of it
long enough to suffocate.

~~~
pavel_lishin
There is also the additional risk of your child getting trapped between the
bed and the wall, or getting wrapped up in blankets, pillows, etc.

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mattnewport
> Over the past few decades, the U.K. has also seen a large drop in SIDS.
> Since 2003, total SIDS deaths has fallen by 40 percent, from about 350
> deaths per year to about 200 deaths per year, the nonprofit Lullaby Trust
> reports. At the same time, the SIDS rate in U.S. has nearly plateaued at
> about 90 deaths per 100,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
> reports.

If this paragraph is accurate, why is the incidence around 200 times lower in
the UK?

~~~
jahewson
> 350 deaths per year to about 200 deaths per year

It's correct but their numbers are presented in a confusing manner. The UK
figure is total deaths for the whole country, but the US figure is given per
100,000. There were 774,835 live births in the UK in 2016. So that's
350/774835*100000 = 45 per 100,000 vs. 90 per 100,000 in the US. So 50% lower.

~~~
mattnewport
Ah, that makes sense, I didn't realize the per 100,000 was per 100,000 live
births. Thanks.

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loteck
There's a lot of different approaches to raising children. That's ok and
people should feel good making their own choices. Chances are, it will turn
out fine.

The only way to have an objective, public conversation about infant sleeping
is: what solution presents the least risk to the infants' lives in aggregate?

Straying from that approach should be a decision taken only once the parents
are fully informed about the risk to the life of the infant.

~~~
git_rancher
Strictly focusing on minimizing risk to life imo leads to practices that
neglect quality of life. Imagine if keeping your baby isolated at night meant
that later in her life she would have trouble trusting the world and would as
a result be handicapped when it comes to making and keeping healthy
relationships. That's what some folks believe will happen.

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jacobolus
The strictures against bed sharing are crazy, IMO.

For the first year, my wife and infant son could both be completely asleep
_while he was eating_ (I was the only person kept awake by the activity).

I hear stories from new parents about how they can’t get any sleep because
their crib-bound baby keeps fussing and waking them up many times a night....
sounds like a nightmare.

~~~
cbo100
It depends heavily on the child too.

Our first wouldn't settle in cot on her own, to the extent that we co-slept
(at least in a cot attached to our bed for ~2 years).

Our second, he wouldn't settle in a co-sleeping siutation at all, and has
actually ended up being much better at sleeping in his own cot in the room
with his sister.

My hunch is that its the noise, going into your own room with nobody else,
complete silence. That's scary. Sharing a room with others and hearing their
breathing and moving and such is calming.

~~~
shaklee3
Get a white noise machine.

~~~
emmanuel_1234
Alternatively, get one of those bluetooth speaker. Get a free recording of a
vacuum cleaner / AC unit / any kind of white noise.

I used it to put my son to sleep (with a timer to fade out the volume) with
great success.

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ramblerman
One thing I don't see mentioned here is weight. Statistically people have
gotten a lot heavier, and I wonder if being significantly overweight does not
increase the risk either?

~~~
stevekemp
Very much so. I've seen sporadic news-reports of people suffocating their
babies, by rolling over on top of them.

The mirror claims 133/year, in this piece, but I'd imagine true stats are
harder to find:

[https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/133-babies-
accidentall...](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/133-babies-accidentally-
dying-every-11929780)

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iambateman
I have two responses to this article:

(1) My ancestors participated in a multitude of activities which I find
misguided or dangerous. It is a logical fallacy to say: “a practice happened
for a long time, therefore it’s positive.”

(2) If you drink or smoke (??) your odds jump from 1:16,000 to 1:150????? We
need a better explanation of that jump. A LOT of people smoke or drink. This
headline is dangerous by giving the impression that these studies were wrong.
They weren’t wrong, it just might be an overstated risk for some demographics.

They give an analogy of dying in a car accident. I face less risk of dying in
a car accident than some people for good reasons: I work from home, don’t
drink much, good income, etc.

But I still wear a seatbelt! It doesn’t make sense for me to say that my
instincts tell me not to wear a seatbelt and my demographics check out so it’s
no big deal.

In short, come on NPR. This is shoddy and dangerous journalism, even if the
premise ends up being validated.

~~~
jacobolus
Substantial drinking makes people sleep much more deeply, similar to severe
sleep deprivation. (Someone who just pulled 2 all-nighters in a row should
also probably not co-sleep with an infant.)

For example, people who fall asleep with their arm draped over the back of a
chair, and remain asleep even though their nerve is pinched, can end up with
severe damage to the radial nerve, in some cases requiring months for the
nerve to heal. This gets the name “saturday night palsy” because of the
association with alcohol use: the pain would ordinarily cause a sober and well
rested person to wake up and shift around.

Basically, someone who is substantially drunk has a much higher chance of
rolling over and crushing the infant without waking up. We’re talking about
getting very drunk here though, not sipping a glass of wine with dinner.

~~~
joshschreuder
That is quite intuitive. What is the explanation for smokers though? As far as
I’m aware there is no or limited impact on sleep for smokers, at least not in
making sleep more deep (otherwise I suspect we may see more smokers!)

~~~
szemet
I've found this:
[http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=18903](http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=18903)

 _" babies who sleep with smoker parents suffer from ‘third hand smoke', in
other words, the harmful smoke particles that impregnate their parents' skin,
clothes and hair"_

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_Codemonkeyism
"According to Mitchell's data, bed-sharing raises her baby's risk of SIDS from
about 1 in 46,000 to 1 in 16,400, or an increase of .004 percentage points."

?

~~~
jaycroft
(1/16400) - (1/46000) ~= 0.00004076, or about 0.004 percentage points.
Reasonable on the face - so, are you instead arguing that percentage points
are misleading?

I would say that they are an appropriate measure when evaluating risky
alternatives. If you said, "it's three times more likely to kill by SIDS",
that doesn't help if you also have a similar long tail stat such as "but it's
also 10 times less likely to die of cancer due to cosmic radiation due to
shielding by the mother's body!" Cool, but your baby doesn't actually have a
3x better chance of survival from the combination of the two effects. The
thing that matters is death rates, and death rates are measured in percentage
points, not ratios of percentages. Only with rates can we tell if we're going
after low hanging fruit or making micro-optimisations that don't actually
matter.

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moneytide1
I'm no parent, but the act of separation during those early weeks of ones life
may be necessary to prepare the person to be self-sufficient one day.

~~~
feydaykyn
You should read some modern psychology book because this reasoning is false,
especially for an infant. In French there's an amazing book by Catherine
Gueguen, "pour une enfance heureuse" (For a happy childhood), it builds on the
latest researches to offer guidelines. Its scientific take helped me overcome
such unfounded traditional thinking as the one expressed. Sadly, I couldn' t
find it in English, but there will be others.

