Links to Articles on Co-Sleeping by James McKenna, PhD
Co-Sleeping & Suffocation: A Response to the Consumer Product Safety Commission Study
Societal Influences on Sleep Research
“Why We Never Ask ‘Is It Safe for Infants to Sleep Alone?’ “ - This link will bring up an open/save file box for Foxit Reader. Opening will bring up the article by the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine in 2001.
Listening to NPR last week, I caught the tail end of an article on the dangers of co-sleeping, with some public health commissioner in Texas. And I was appalled that NPR would not follow that up with an interview on the benefits of co-sleeping, or at least a rebuttal to the guy’s statement that co-sleeping is unsafe and everyone should have a crib for babies (there were several deaths there last week, which is what prompted the interview). Everything that I’ve read–including these links, very interesting–suggests that co-sleeping is a much healthier and happier lifestyle choice for both parents and baby (at least until your little one gets big enough to hurt when she kicks!) Has your experience been a positive one?
Here’s a link to the NPR story so you can listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12262817. And here’s the CPSC report that the first link rebuts (I think): http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/PRHTML99/99175.html.
These links were actually to me through various channels (friends of my mother) in response to that NPR program.
Our experience has absolutely been a positive one! I loved sleeping next to Sara Ellen as an infant. I always knew how she was, if she needed to be nursed or held. I felt secure as a new mother knowing I could put my hand right on her chest to check her breathing. Also in her infancy she would wake up around 4 or 6am and we’d have family time for a bit, then get more sleep. Even now, as we don’t go on a regulated schedule, we wake up together usually mostly rested and pretty happy.