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from Natural Life Magazine, Sept/Oct
2007
Natural Child
Column
For Families Living
Greener, Healthier Lifestyles
The Benefits of Sleeping With Your Baby
 Cosleeping with a baby is common in many parts of the world. But
it’s controversial in North America, where some medical
organizations warn that it can cause suffocation. Here is another,
positive
perspective about cosleeping from James J. McKenna, Ph.D., author of a new book on
the subject called Sleeping with Your Baby: A Parent's Guide to Cosleeping (Platypus Media, LLC, 2007). Dr. McKenna directs the
Mother-Baby Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. He has
been studying cosleeping for over 25 years.
Q: Does cosleeping benefit babies?
A: Benefits are, of course, always relevant to whom is cosleeping, what
it means to them, and how they practice it. Cosleeping makes babies
happy. From a scientific point of view, cosleeping babies cry less
and sleep more. Babies lying next to their mothers can breastfeed
easily without having to cry in order to make their needs known.
Mothers get more sleep, too (though it is more light sleep.) Here in
North America, we are the most unsatisfied, unhappy and exhausted parents
in the world because we place babies at odds with their biology.
Q:
Isn’t cosleeping dangerous?
A: Sleeping
alone is not biologically correct. Human infants are born more
neurologically immature than any other species (excluding
marsupials.) Our central nervous systems depend on a
microenvironment that is like the in-utero environment, full of
sensory stimulation. Babies need the warmth, stimulation and
monitoring that comes with sleeping next to a caregiver.
Almost all,
fully 95 percent, of the world sleeps with their baby, and there are
only very few cultures in the world for which babies sleeping alone
is even thought to be acceptable or desirable. In many Asian
cultures where cosleeping is the norm, including China, Vietnam,
Cambodia and Thailand, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is either
unheard of or rare. In Hong Kong and Japan, which have almost
universal cosleeping, SIDS rates are among the lowest in the world.
The vast majority of scientific studies on infant behavior and
development conducted in diverse fields during the last 100 years
suggests that the question placed before us should not be “Is it
safe to sleep with my baby?” but rather, “Is it safe not to do so?”
My book includes information on how to bedshare safely and when it
should be avoided, information parents need to make sound choices.
Q:
Why do parents always get told that they should never sleep with
their babies?
A:
Parents are receiving dangerous advice from medical authorities that
mislead them into assuming that all pediatricians and all SIDS
researchers recommend against bedsharing. This is just not true. The
American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on SIDS claims bedsharing
is always hazardous. This is flat out wrong! Done correctly, whether
this means cosleeping, bedsharing or room sharing, infants sleeping
with their parents are more likely to survive! The U.S. Consumer
Products Safety Commission says never sleep with your baby; the only
safe place for an infant to sleep is in a crib that meets current
safety standards.
It is sad that a small group of “experts” have the
parents in western countries bamboozled into believing that the
entire history of civilization was wrong, that parents and babies
have been doing it all wrong since the dawn of humanity!
Q: Should parents rely on doctors for infant
sleep advice?
A: One of the most important things I am hoping
to do is remind parents that while professional evaluation is important for sick
children, issues of childcare, especially regarding where babies sleep and the
relationship this reflects, are decisions best made by information-armed
parents, not by external authorities who neither know the parents, nor the
infant, nor how sleeping arrangements might work in any given family. At this
point in time, medical authorities seem overly willing to use selected and
simplistic medical findings to infer their own conclusions about where babies
should sleep. Many employ, in my mind inappropriately, a one-size-must-fit-all
strategy for sleeping arrangements. Indeed, cosleeping is being misrepresented –
often by people who think they know something about it but choose to dismiss any
scientific evidence that disagrees with their own negative position. Many of
these authorities only know about catastrophic failures associated with
dangerous forms of cosleeping and use these failures to draw simplistic
conclusions about a very complex practice.
Q: Won’t my child be emotionally dependent if
we cosleep?
A: Absolutely not! Independence and autonomy
have nothing to do with forcing babies to learn how to sleep by themselves.
Parents are often under the mistaken impression that if they don’t train their
babies to sleep alone every night, somehow some developmental or social skill
later in life will be kept from them, or that their babies will never exhibit
good sleep patterns later in life. Yet research has consistently shown us that
children who routinely sleep with their parents or are not “sleep-trained,”
actually become more independent socially and psychologically, are able to be
alone better by themselves, and have greater abilities to interrelate and be
empathetic.
Q: Do you believe that all parents should
cosleep with their babies?
A: No, I believe parents should do what they
feel is best for their families. I think it is important to empower parents and
let them know that every child born in the world is unique as is each family.
Since no child is the same, no solution to what children need is necessarily the
same. Parents know their own babies better than anyone. Pediatricians are not
trained in human development, childcare strategies or psychology. They know how
to fix sick babies. We have to be very careful to not medicalize behaviors that
are not appropriately medicalized: where babies sleep, what is a proper sleeping
arrangement and how parents decide to respond to their baby’s nutritional needs.
I do believe that parents should be well-informed so that they are able to make
the best decisions for their families, and so that if they do choose to do
something like share a bed with their baby, they can do it as safely as
possible.
This is one of a sampling of articles
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