Informed decisions, safer choices

When we separate mother and baby, the result is sleep problems. #breastsleeping is nature's solution to a problem which developed in relatively recent times.

It is normal and natural for babies and children to sleep alongside their mother in the breastfeeding season and graduate to sleep with siblings or other family members when a new baby comes along. Everyone shares sleep surfaces with someone they love. Nobody is ostracised or expected to sleep alone.

From hunter-gatherer families to subsistence farmers, factory workers and merchants - only the most wealthy would substitute the mother with a paid nanny. And nanny would sleep close to those in her care.

Religious beliefs about the sanctity of the marriage bed pushed babies out into cradles and truckle beds in a corner near the hearth, while multiple older children would share a bed in the large families of poor people in crowded slum conditions. Cosleeping became tainted by its correlation with poverty. The elite did not share beds with their children but the poor did so. And due to illness, lack of ventilation and coal fires, sedation with alcohol and opioids and desperate acts by women who had no control over the steady stream of new mouths to feed ....bed-sharing became associated with infant mortality.

But the evidence is strong: fully breastfed children whose parents intentionally cosleep in a family bed where drugs and alcohol are not a factor, have a very low rate of Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI) from SIDS or fatal sleep accidents.

Adults struggling to stay awake as they sit upright feeding a baby on a sofa or armchair, adults who smoke or are affected by drugs or alcohol ... these are the conditions where cosleeping babies are most at risk.

Teaching parents how to safely share a sleep surface or share a room with their baby in the first year is an investment in reducing deaths. Blanket admonishment not to cosleep increases risk as parents make uninformed choices in the heat of the moment without planning or preparation.

Teaching safer cosleeping to parents protects infants.