ugh-CNN.com/AP headline about cosleeping

[melamama]

More infants sharing bed with parents (http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/parenting/01/13/bed.sharing.ap/index.html)

This should be a good thing, but the slant that the AP and CNN.com give it implies deadly danger. No mention is made of informing parents of safe ways to cosleep, only some Atlanta Ped. who says she discourages bed sharing among her poor clients who can't afford a bassinet or crib for the baby. (where should the baby sleep safely then? and couldn't she tell her clients how to sleep safely with their baby?) And it also mentions the 1999 Consumer Product Safety Comission report (which if I remember correctly is methodologically questionable)

Even more annoying is that when you go to the journal that they picked up the story from, the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine (http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/current/toc.html) From the abstract it seems to just report on the trend and suggest that more studies are necessary to let health care providers and parents know about the risks and benefits.

ugh.

[Lucky Charm]

I just read the Rocky Mountain news, and way in the back of the paper, was a teeny tiny blib about cosleeping. it says that that APA doesnt recommend it, that babies die from it, and that it increases the incidence of SIDS.

as a mainstreamer, even i know the remark about sids is a bunch of crap. even someone like me knows that co-sleeping is supposed to lower the incidence of sids. (i think i read that us mamas blowing off CO2 makes the babe breathe??).

[Rhonwyn]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/858711.asp

These news organizations don't research anything anymore! Everything is canned! It makes me suspect all of their reporting.

[Moooommy]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/103974_bedshare.shtml

and it made my blood boil!

[mrzmeg]

Yup. http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/bed_sharing.cfm .
Perhaps they should read stuff by Meredith Small. She shows that the idea of a healthy infant suffocating/being crushed when sleeping with a sober adult was a myth begun during the industrial revolution to cover up infanticide.
Ugh.

[funnybunny]

If I remember correctly, the CNN.com article said something like 64 babies die every year when in an adult bed. Were the babies left alone in an adult bed? Was it a waterbed? Were the parents drunk or using drugs (legal or illegal)? How does that statistic compare to the number of children who die alone in their cribs every year?

Throwing out a number like that, without some point of reference, doesn't do much for me. I slept with my children as infants (so I could breastfeed them on demand) and felt safe doing so. I would like to get some hard numbers so that my friends who are doing the same thing won't be discouraged by their mothers or doctors who tell them they will surely crush their baby.

[CD_addict]

Also, they don't compare those figures with the number of SIDS deaths in cribs or crib accidents which are higher than any co-sleeping figures.


It is so irresposible of them to write this crap!!!! And this is all the ammo my mom needs to harp on me about co-sleeping :(

[dotcommama]

The problem is our media loves to scare us - it gets us to watch or read their stupid news article.

Now it wouldn't be really scary to report that co-sleeping is safe as long as you follow basic common sense and aren't drugged out. That type of article is not exciting enough - no it's much better to flash a scary headline that makes parents have to read the article to see if they are going to accidentally harm their child.

Grrrrrrr! I really hate this kind of stuff!

[lucimomster]

Yeah, the media likes controversy, but that's not the root of the reporting.

You've gotta understand that the crib manufacturers are regularly pushing "news" releases out to the media with these "leads." They're being more aggressive because attachment parenting is becoming more common ... so they're losing money every time a family decides to ditch using cribs.

Luci

[BattleAxe]

my mom waved this in my face this morning -- we're visiting and I have DS in my bed because the house is cold and because I like co-sleeping... my mom has been on my case about this since DS was born, but I pointed out all the article's biases and that the crib mfrs. regularly put this crap out...

what particularly offended me about the article (besides the opening sentence) was the emphasis that this "unsafe" practice is most common among people of color, poor people, teenaged moms, and "people of culture" -- as if to reinforce that if "such people" do it, it must be bad, and they do it out of ignorance rather than any sensible reasoning. I went to the NIH press release and found the same biases in the stats mentioned, but the AP writer just amped everything up and made it even more blatant.

un-frickin'-believable. let's have a co-sleep-in tonight, mamas! or... start a letter-writing campaign to the APA, NIH, AP, ...

[kama'aina mama]

It really is infuriating that many people think that a reasonable response to drug users getting HIV is a needle exchange and that STD's are best prevented by education and availability of protection... but to educate people about safe co-sleeping? NO! If you have poor clients who cannot afford a crib either give them $500 to buy one or make sure they know how to co-sleep safely. I would expect that 1st or 2nd generation immigrants who are doing it are probably safer but there may be elements in their beds that their parents and grandparents never had, so probably some education would be a good idea there too. This makes me want to make a bunch of copies of Motherings safety checklist for co-sleeping and pass it out down at the local WIC office.

[lilyka]

I wrote a letter back to them. Don't know if it will do any good Well yeah, i do know, i know that it won't but I will sleep better tonight - next to my baby :). i also pointed out why people co-sleep, and even amoung low income people i doubt they wil be able to find anyone who co-sleeps because they can't afford a crib.:rolleyes:

[Girl Named Sandoz]

i dont know how trustworthy those figures are, i know a lot of "white/ high income etc." people that co-sleep. maybe they are just culturally conditioned not to admit to it as readily. ;)

apart from that, reading their article one would think that cosleeping is a deadlier danger than arsenic to babies. :rolleyes: such uneducated journalism.

[mamazee]

There's another thing that annoys me about this article.

When figures are given on SIDS in cribs, SIDS generally means NO OTHER KNOWN CAUSE OF DEATH, as in if a baby suffocated on a baby bumper, then cause of death is suffocation and NOT SIDS.

However, when a baby dies in a bed and the cause is, say, overlayment, then SIDS is still considered cause of death. Overlayment in a bed = SIDS, but suffocation from a crib bumper doesn't = SIDS.

Pisses me off.

[melamama]

I went back to Mothering's cosleeping issue, and in the editorial (http://mothering.com/editorials/editorial113.shtml) she talks about the Consumer Products Safety Commission number of 64 deaths due to cosleeping a year. They got this number by going to death certificates -not through research. Scientifically this is a questionable way to get data, since what gets written on death certificates isn't always the whole story. The CPSC then uses the number of 64 as "cosleeping deaths" (when the only thing they really know is that the baby ended up in the bed-not really cause of death). The CPSC also announced the dangers of cosleeping at a trade show for baby goods manufacturers

I decided last night to order another issue of the cosleeping issue and to send mine to that Atlanta pede.

[RachelGS]

I share everyone's concerns! The last few paragraphs of this one are great, though! (Less sure about the rest of it...)

http://www.iwon.com/home/health/health_article/0,11720,511275|01-15-2003::06:00,00.html