Also: everyone will have advice: you will learn to ignore most of it. Particularly advice by your parents. They had babies in a time when there were different priorities. So you'll have to learn to find your own way, trust your instincts, talk to other parents you like/admire.
You can safely ignore most advice by most people :)
(ps: my tip: you can't spoil a baby, not until they're, say, 1 year old (then discipline becomes part of the game. You can never kiss/hold/love them enough or give them too much attention at that age.)
Yes, the reality is terrible, but as with anything else, it's risk/reward. I would rather enjoy the reward of going outside, even though there's a chance I will be struck by a car.
In my opinion, the reward to the parents and the baby from co-sleeping outweighs the risks. You should of course take precautions to mitigate the risk.
My son is two weeks old by now, and the nurses at the hospital all said that a mother won't crush her child in bed. Apparently women have some kinds of instincts at work here.
Men are a less safe bet, apparently. My sister (a phyisician) said that it can be dangerous if the men are drugged (alcohol, for example).
There is also the sudden infant death syndrome. They still don't know what's going on, but statistics seem to dictate to have the baby sleep in the same room, but separate bed. That doesn't apply for the first four weeks, though - in the first four weeks it is apparently fine to have the baby sleep in the same bed.
Also consider that the sudden infant death thing stems from the cold world of modern medicine. I think in individual cases it is probably OK to not stick to every rule. Some might be more important than others, too. For example smoking in the household seems to be extremely bad.
I know of a case where a baby died of asphyxiation while sleeping on the parent's bed. It may be isolated incident or whatever but I wouldn't dismiss this risk.
There are other cultures where sleeping with your baby is the norm, and they don't have issues babies dying left and right due to parents rolling over on them, so I think we need more than anecdotes to say that it's dangerous.
I'm not saying it's a huge problem (I don't know) but it doesn't seem a good idea to risk it:
"There has been a fourfold increase in the rate of infant strangulation and suffocation in the U.S. in the past 20 years, according to a report released today, and the apparent cause (though hardly the definitive one) is the rise in numbers of babies who share beds with their parents." source: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/the-risks-of-s...
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warn that infants should not co-sleep with their parents." source: http://www.marchofdimes.com/pnhec/298_29656.asp
It's also true that babies that sleep with their parents hasn't been a cultural thing in the US. I'd say that in the last 20 years, the number of people doing it has increased, which likely accounts for the increase in the numbers of deaths due to it.
Using this same logic, we should have abandoned the adoption of the automobile because as it became more and more commonplace, automobile-related deaths rose as well.
It's a simple trade-off or risk management. In the case of cars we accept the risk in exchange for our lifestyle (going to work, go to buy food etc) so this is an acceptable trade-off for most people (I like to reduce the driving risk by grouping errands, walking when I can etc).
In the case of sleeping with a baby you are taking a risk but for what reward? "cultural thing"? not having to sit up in bed and reach to the crib? this risk/reward ratio is horrible and cannot be compared with the one for cars.
* You can just as easily say that having your baby sleep in a crib runs the risk of you having purchased a 'defective' crib that will kill your baby and spawn a recall.
* You can easily say that putting your baby in another room runs the risk of something happening to your baby in the other room that you either can't hear, or can't get there fast enough to do anything about.
* Your baby can just as easily die from SIDS in a crib as they can in your bed, and SIDS is probably a larger risk than you rolling over on your baby (as long as your don't go to bed after drugs and/or alcohol).
> this risk/reward ratio is horrible
Please tell me what the risk/reward ratio is.
> In the case of cars we accept the risk in exchange for our lifestyle
> (going to work, go to buy food etc) so this is an acceptable
> trade-off for most people
Most people don't do risk/reward ratios. What is the risk/reward ratio of the majority of the populous zooming around in personal automobiles as opposed to pooling resources for effective (and well-maintained) public transit? In many of the places where public transit languished while automobile usage took off it had far more to do with the prestige of owning a car. Using public transit meant you were poor, but having a car (or multiple cars!) was a status symbol. Why do you think that you can find extremely 'pimped out' cars in the drive-ways of houses that are falling apart in places like Detroit? Why do I get teenagers/20-somethings (infrequently) yelling things like, "I got wheels baby! WHoooo!" (or similar) when I'm walking along a busy street? The car is a status symbol a hell of a lot more than it is a utility device (do you really need to drive 5 blocks to the store to pick up beer and drive back home?)
Just checked that last link. Sorry, but it is not even science. 5 kids died who were sleeping in their parents beds. How many kids die on average, what percentage of them sleeps in their parents beds?
I sure hope the "let them sleep in their own beds" directive has a more solid foundation than that.
I think in this case anecdotes is a fine data point. While there may not be a statistically significant increase in deaths for babies sleeping in bed with their parents, accidentally killing your kid by rolling over on them would be horrible.
Having your baby die in the next room because you couldn't hear them struggle would be horrible too. Just don't sleep next to them dead-drunk, and put a pregnancy pillow around them. It's fine.
SIDS is less an actual disease, and more a convenient bucket to categorize "babies dying of asphyxiation for reasons we don't understand".
Some of those are becoming better understood (babies can't always tell if they're breathing CO2 rather than oxygen so it turns out they shouldn't sleep on their tummies) but mostly it's a fancy medical term for "we don't know". It's not even a mysterious disease and "no one knows what it's caused by"--we don't even know that a disease exists.
And what would the pediatrician say? No one knows what SIDS is caused by and deferring to external authority won't change that. Do whatever feels right for you.
No one knows what SIDS is caused by, but that certainly doesn't mean your pediatrician can't have any useful info on it.
There are many studies on what reduces the occurrence. For example, the "back to sleep" campaign saw SIDS incidence go down by 50% in just a few years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Sleep
True but that would usually be info you could just pick up from any book. The "ask your pediatrician" disclaimer just makes things seem dangerous that really aren't.
SIDS is 6x higher in families where one or both parents smoke. The lower incidence in the last years might just be because of less people smoking.
Anecdote: our midwife told us that we should put our son to sleep on his back. She also told us that in her working life, she'd first had to tell parents to put their kids to sleep on their belly, years later they were supposed to be safest on their side - there were even little foam triangles sold so the babies would stay put. Now it's on their back.
I'd still say go with what feels right and worry about things that are more important.
There is nothing here the doctor can add, really. I've got two little ones myself, and while they both have their own room, had we chosen this route I wouldn't be bothering to ask a doctor about it.
