Amer. Baby article-Beware of Bed! RANT

[Achelois72]

Maybe somebody already mentioned this--January's edition of American Baby has a little blurb entitled "Beware of Baby in Bed" with a picture of a little one in a crib with the caption "A crib is safer than your bed." Agh. I know, I shouldn't even read this magazine. It drives me crazy. It states that the risk of our babies suffocating is 40 times higher if sleeping in our bed than in a crib according to a study done by the St. Louis University School of medicine.

One of my friends who teaches preschool and has his degree in Child Development told me he learned of this study in a class he took for work. He was concerned because he knew Lucas slept with us--and 40%--that's just too huge a figure to ignore according to him. He felt we should know the risks. Aaaggh! Did he look into the study? How was it done? Who were these people co-sleeping? I wanna know.

[fyrflymommy]

yeah i saw that too! i was gonna post about it and never got around to it. i think we should write some letters!!! that blurb is gonna scare parents into crib-sleeping....i mean the babies into the cribs:LOL

i wann know about this study too.....sounds like it has major flaws...

that magazine pisses me off (can i use that word here?) but i read it anyway to see what kind of crap they're feeding these parents!

[fyrflymommy]

ooh here's an article on the study!!! just googled the university + co-sleeping

http://www.azsidf.org/newsltr/vol5/5bed.html looks like over 60% of the babes were sleeping on their tummies. key point 2 is saying that bedsharing and cosleeping arent the same thing!

[fyrflymommy]

oooh go here it has the study!!!

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/112/4/883

[DreamsInDigital]

I loathe all those parenting magazines and unfortunately they seem to have found out I had a baby because I keep getting them in the mail.

[FitMama]

If you ask me these magazines are just vehicles for formula ads. I quit them long ago.

[nancy926]

Studies like this are just fearmongering.

There were 391 suffocations in adult beds reported over 4 years (1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998). That's less than 100 a year in the entire country!

Also, I think deaths are more likely to be reported as "accidental smothering" if the child dies in the family bed (rather than a crib), just because the coroner or whoever can't think of a better cause.

Edited to add: the "40 times the risk" part comes from a part of the study where they looked at 348 deaths in children under 8 mos old and compared them to a "random sample" of 4220 living infants of the same age. The abstract doesn't say how they did the math, but they probably looked at deaths in adult beds vs living infants who sleep in adult beds, and then deaths in cribs vs living infants who sleep in cribs. It might have looked something like this:

270 deaths in adult beds vs 450 living infants who cosleep

78 deaths in cribs vs 3770 living infants who sleep in cribs

That makes it look scary, huh? Well, I for one am not scared. They don't say anything about people who drink or use drugs before falling asleep w/their kids, and they can't say that all of the reported "accidental suffocations" were truly due to suffocation and not some underlying physical condition in the infant, etc. Plus, so many people use a crib part-time and co-sleep part-time that it's impossible to pigeonhole a lot of people. I think they should just provide safety information for cribs AND adult beds and leave people alone.

Please also note that some of the authors are from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a "thing" for cribs. Mothering mag did a big spread about the CPSC's obsession with crib sleeping awhile ago - it is NOT an objective group!

Edited again to add: here's a link to some letters that make a lot of good points:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/112/4/883#473


Off the soapbox!!
:)
Nancy

[Alstrameria]

Didn't I also read something that said the study included waterbeds and couches as adult beds? I think I did, I remember thinking "how stupid!"

Jen

[UmmIlyas]

“Not only has bedsharing not been proven to be protective against SIDS but the current study confirms that it can, under a number of conditions, actually be hazardous. Mothers who choose to bedshare with their infants to facilitate breastfeeding and bond with their baby need to open their eyes to a myriad of potential safety hazards associated with the adult sleep environment not intended or designed to accommodate infants.”

Just wondering....why do we need 'sleep environments' that are 'designed' to 'accommodate' infants? It sounds odd to me. Of course everyone needs to know about those things which are unsafe for babies (like lots of cushy padding on your bed). But 'designed environments'? It a wonder the human race has survived to this point without 'designed environments to accommodate infants' . (Sounds like a hotel ad to me!)

Ok, now the key points really scared the bejeebers out of me! I share my bed with my baby...am I doing something wrong? I think I'll start a new thread on this...

cheers

[UmmIlyas]

Well, I for one am not scared.

Honestly, sometimes I am totally unafraid. And sometimes I'm just a nervouse Nelly. I think I looked at this article on one of my fraidy-cat days. *sigh*

[RidentMama]

I don't know why I read that magazine...it ALWAYS has something in it that upsets both myself and my husband. DD seems to enjoy the pictures of the smiling babies as she shreds the 'zine though :shrug

[Jilian]

Originally posted by FitMama
If you ask me these magazines are just vehicles for formula ads. I quit them long ago.

I agree. Their whole magazine is one big ad for this or that silly baby product. I find their "Parent-tested best baby products" section hiliarious. It is always very obvious that the "best product" is the company that gave them the most $$ that month.

They had an article on diapers last month too. It was all about disposables with a tiny little mention of cloth and how even cloth devotees buy sposies for use when on the go. Yeah, OK

:rolleyes:

[RidentMama]

Oh yeah! That's the article that really torqued me this past issue...giving up CDing in favor of 'sposies on the road? That's a crock of...well, you get the idea! Phooie on them! I went to Canada for a week with DD when I had only a few CDs for use, and I washed them out in the sink every cotton-pickin' day so I wouldn't have to use 'sposies. There were two times when I had to use 'sposies 'cause the CDs weren't dry, but only for a limited time. Now that I have my stash built up, there's no way I'd have to use a 'sposie! Oh yeah, and we took an extended vacation around Thanksgiving (6 days)...used cloth the entire time! Who in the world does the research for these articles? And where in the world are they getting their "facts"?