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The City of Milwaukee Health Department wants to tell you that co-sleeping is like letting your baby sleep with a sharp knife . They are sharing this news via two new posters (one with a black baby one with a white baby) that tell parents that babies can die when sleeping in adult beds and that warn parents to always put their baby to sleep on its back in a crib. They also give a phone number for people to call if they cannot afford a crib.
I’ve been over this before. Statistically, co-sleeping is as dangerous as traveling by car (really, read the stats). But the health authorities ignore that. When I wrote about this previously, I said:
Cars are convenient. People like cars. Peoples lives would be changed significantly and we would have to drastically change our habits to give up cars.
Bed sharing is convenient. Parents and babies like co-sleeping. Parents would be more tired, breastfeeding rates would be reduced, and parents would be less responsive to their infants at night if they had to give up bed sharing.
Bed sharing is a reality. Parents do it. Banning it or discouraging it is as ridiculous as trying to ban or discourage car travel.
If people stopped traveling by car except when it was really necessary, there would probably be more accidents and more deaths because the roads would be full of inexperienced drivers. And when parents are generally discouraged from sleeping with their babies and then bring them into bed when really desperate, there are more accidents, more deaths.
The Ontario coroner should stop telling people not to bed share and instead tell them how to make bed sharing safer. Public health agencies don’t tell people not to travel by car, instead they tell them to use seatbealts, use car seats, drive the speed limit, don’t use cell phones while driving, etc. Address the conditions that make bed sharing unsafe. But don’t tell people not to do it. Because they will. And they will do it unsafely.
But since the City of Milwaukee likes its analogies in visual format, I thought I would help them out by creating an equivalent poster with the message that taking your baby in the car is just like giving your baby a loaded gun to play with.
The idea that crib sleeping is always a perfectly acceptable alternative to co-sleeping is laden with as much societal and cultural baggage as the assumption that walking is always a perfectly acceptable alternative to travel by car. Sometimes it might be, but often it simply isn’t. Health authorities need to stop scaring and shaming parents and instead teach them about the pros and cons of different sleep options and about the things that they can do to make their chosen sleep environment as safe as possible.
More info: Co-Sleeping Safety
just in a crib? while they were at it, couldn’t they at least bring up the dangers of venetian blind strings, heavy art and weak nails, overly fluffy comforters, and smothery stuffed animals? used/thrift cribs with too-wide slats? mattresses that don’t fit tightly?
the knife ad made me laugh, but yours is great, too. ;^)
Wow. That’s an extreme image! You’re smart to point out that people are going to co-sleep regardless, and I think the car analogy is poignant.
None of these campaigns seem to address the reasons people co-sleep in the first place. Sure, some people adopt co-sleeping as part of their initial parenting plan (and since they plan for it from the beginning, are probably more likely to know how to do it safely). But if someone is co-sleeping because they are too physically exhausted to listen to a baby in a crib scream any longer, have to work in three hours and simply HAVE to sleep, or have tried everything they can think of and get a baby to sleep anywhere else, then telling them “always put your baby to sleep on his back, in a crib” isn’t really all that helpful. What if you can afford a crib, but can’t afford trying to function on no sleep?
Well said.
I really think they should just be more specific. Co-sleeping with your baby is like putting them to sleep with a knife IF you are a crystal meth addict, a narcoleptic, a drunken lout, a Restless Legs Syndrome sufferer or Charlie Sheen. Who is all of the above.
Ha!
Thanks! I really did laugh out loud!
I have Restkless leg syndrome and have co-slept peacefully with my daughter for over 2 years. RLS is not a contraindication for co-sleeping.
only if you sleep with them by your shins.
Oh you said it so well! That campaign is so freaking ridiculous! It’s a weird subverted agenda they are trying to push and I’m so happy to hear your voice speaking with such eloquence about the nonsensical aspects of it all. Your image and poster is great!
It’s too bad babies can’t read those posters, they don’t seem to get it that in the modern era, they aren’t supposed to want to be close to their parents at night, that it’s actually dangerous 
I tried “on his back in a crib” for 17 months with my first and was a walking zombie until one night I pulled the mattress OUT of his crib and slept on it with him on the floor of his room (oh wait, but I wasn’t actually supposed to RESPOND to his waking, at least, that’s what my pediatrician told me, I guess it was my fault he wasn’t sleeping well after all.) After that, if he wanted to sleep with us, we let him. If we’d done it sooner, we’d all have gotten a lot more rest.
It is very important to note that Milwaukee has an extremely high infant mortality rate, higher than that of many developing countries. 10-15% of those deaths in 2010 were attributed to unsafe sleep environments. It could be argued (as you’ve done here) that they are going about it in the wrong way, but at least they are trying to do something. And it’s much easier for billboards, soundbites, etc. to have a short, clear message. You can’t blame them for trying to tackle a huge, huge issue in their city.
It would be interesting to know what the formula-feeding rates in Milwaukee are.
See my comments below. Milwaukee has crisis level racial disparities for infant mortality. While I appreciate their efforts to do something, this campaign is not going to address the true underlying issues, which have nothing to do with co-sleeping.
I would like to see formula and vaccine rates….. 49 percent of SIDS cases are within 3 weeks after a vaccine.
What a coincidence! It also turns out that 49% of all babies have had a vaccine in the last 3 weeks!
I first wrote a post on this last year and then recapped on Nov. 11. I am a black woman who grew up in Milwaukee and this breaks my heart. In 2004, the mortality rate for Black infants was 19.2 deaths per 1000 births. It improved slightly in 2008 to 15.2 per 1000. In the Milwaukee deaths, ALL of the babies were formula/ bottle-fed. Some of the mothers were under the influence, some had older children also bed-sharing, most if not all were single parents. They have been running controversial billboards for 2 years and one can say that it’s not helping.
Wow! I cannot believe that they were all formula fed. It is so interesting that there is no mention of this. Also, sounds like there was a lot of unsafe bedsharing going on. I also think the driving with baby analogy is a good one.
Seriously? This is fear-mongering at its highest.
I am deeply offended by the knife ad. Obviously they’re going for a shock effect. It irritates me when I read about how “bad” co-sleeping is presumed to be by the authorities. In many cases they state facts that have little to do with co-sleeping itself… like, parents who are intoxicated and passed out with an infant on a couch or putting heavy bedsheets on an infant. To me, these are not specific issues to co-sleeping.
People seem to forget that we don’t know what causes SIDS…while there was a correlation between stomach sleeping and SIDS one does not cause the other (just ask the number of parents who lost their babies to SIDS who never co-slept or slept on their stomachs). Not to mention that these articles never address the other risk factors associated with SIDS research (low birth rate, parents who smoke, etc).
In Ontario, they only classify a death as SIDS if it happened in what they consider to be a safe sleep environment (on back in a crib with nothing but a fitted sheet and no smokers in the house) and they have no other explanation for it (i.e. no medical conditions). No bed sharing death would ever be called SIDS because they assume that bed sharing is dangerous and it is therefore the cause of death.
These ads make me angry but I think Ontario’s approach to assessing SIDS deaths makes me even more angry. How is anyone trying to research the ACTUAL causes of SIDS supposed to make any headway when the statistics they have to work with are completely worthless?
http://city.milwaukee.gov/breastfeeding
it doesnt give exact % but it says the rates for breastfeeding are MUCH lower
Thanks for finding that! I’m not surprised.
Perhaps, given the studies that link breastfeeding with decreased SIDS rates, instead of attacking co-sleeping, Milwaukee should work on increasing breastfeeding.
From what I read off the site they are also trying to increase breastfeeding in the area. I dont know about any of you other cosleeping mamas…but when me and my little one tuck it at night “yes” in the same bed….i dont have a whole bunch of fluffy pillows, or fluffy blankets…and my child does NOT sleep on their stomach as this picture so clearly depicts…..I have one arm above my childs head and my knees are tucked up underneath his, my other arm is used to make sure the blanket we have is situated quite far from his face….but maybe thats just me
I think that’s pretty typical of how bed-sharing looks. It is the safe way after all.
totally agree!…
Thank you for this! I live in the metro Milwaukee area, and I have coslept with both of my girls. I am currently nursing my 13 month old. I am very disappointed about the message that they are sending to the women in Milwaukee. They should be teaching women how to safely cosleep.
Jenny:
I hope you will express your disappointment to the officials in Milwaukee. They need to hear from people who live there that this is not okay.
Wow. Just wow.
Did you see on the Milwaukee gov’t website that parents who can’t afford a crib may be provided with a Pack n’Play? Are they even regulated items?
Man who brought the knife to a gun fight.
I do not mean to defend this campaign but I am trying to figure out what they were thinking when they decided on this campaign. Perhaps, it wasn’t totally directed at co-sleeping but directed at parents who use a regular bed for their baby because they do not have a crib or room for one. As a social worker and maternal child nurse I have seen families that have limited beds for many family members so their baby may be sleeping wherever there is space available.
My response to such a campaign would be to educate parents about safe sleeping for infants, this should be included along with feeding options and help with breast feeding, bathing and general baby care. Nurses try to give new parents a lot of information before leaving the hospital…car seat safety has been on the agenda for many years now…safe infant sleep should be put on that agenda as well but not with a poster like the one used in Milwaukee.
I think that social and healthcare family workers try to be non-judgmental but this kind of poster to me is directed at the lower socioeconomic population and it speaks volumes…lets use scare techniques rather than education.
Thanks Annie for this thought provoking post. There is still so much to be done in maternal and child care.
thank you for your constant vigilance, insight and critical discourse on all matters relating to conscientious parenting! your articles are so thoughtful and so articulate! i never believed in bed sharing until i had my now 5 month breastfed daughter – she is in a co-sleeper now, but those first few months of bed sharing were so beautiful and so important to my sanity, her security, and our success as a breastfeeding pair. i cried after i took her into my bed, thinking i was doing something wrong. then i realized that mother knows best. thank you soooo much for your site!
Is Milwaulke having a huge problem with babies dying while co-sleeping? I don’t know what the stats are, but I would think they were going for shock factor with these ads just like all public service ads are. Just playing Devils Advocate, but if they are having a huge problem with this, then maybe that’s why they started this campaign. By the way, I am currently cosleeping. Have at one point or another with all of my children.
Monica:
Even if they do have a big problem with co-sleeping deaths, I don’t think this is the way to approach it. If they had a huge problem with fatal car accidents, they wouldn’t warn people not to drive. They would remind people to wear seatbelts, not drink and drive, obey the speed limit, etc.
Your ad is particularly apt cause from the way it looks to me, that kid isn’t strapped into the car seat correctly either. If s/he is rear-facing, the harness strap should be at or below shoulder level (looks like they’re above from the way it goes up over the left shoulder), the harness straps should be tightened more and the chest clip straightened, and no after market products (head cushion) should be used. Just sayin’.
And if s/he is forward-facing, she’s too young.
WORD.
Hear, hear. Those ads are so offensive. Cheap shock tactics and fear-mongering. What is healthy about this North-American notion of leaving a tiny little baby in a room all by him or herself, feeling abandoned and alone. Babies need to be held. Period.
I agree that what they’re doing is utterly ridiculous, but I think I know why. Co-sleeping *can* be dangerous, but only when other factors come into play – drugs, alcohol, smoking. Telling people not to drink, smoke or do drugs is rather like banging your head against a brick wall. Telling people not to co-sleep is new and shiny and could, overall, actually save lives when the boring old drink/smoke/drugs ads have failed.
It’s using a mallet to knock in a drawing pin – whoo! Analogy! – but you can kind of get the intention behind it.
I don’t co-sleep because I have a BMI of 32 and suspected sleep apnoea. I feel that, because of that, I am probably higher risk when it comes to doing some harm while co-sleeping. Nobody has ever told me that’s a problem, but to me it makes sense that it would be. There’s your trouble, as you say – just not enough information.
Becca:
I’ve never seen an infant sleep campaign that focuses on not drinking, smoking or doing drugs if you are sharing a bed with your baby.
No, but then why would they bother making them? We’ve heard the alcohol/drugs/tobacco message so many times now that we’re immune to it, even when it’s tied in with more emotive images. Cigarette packets in this country have pictures of ICU babies, corpses and tar-laden lungs on them, and yet people still buy them.
IMO its more of a Money issue. Its cheaper to educate people on One type then two. Its cheaper to Scare people away from something then spend hours of proper training of teachers/nurses/social workers etc. And also ignorance of the subject. Takes to much time and money to research to get the proper stats oh what really happened.
This isnt even a cosleeping issue because real cosleeping isnt passing out on the sofa with the baby in hand or one night letting baby stay in the bed. Real cosleeping is constant and has forethought to it.
Milwaukee has a major issue with babies dying and it isn’t from co-sleeping – they should focus on THIS, which has been identified as a crisis so major my understanding is the CDC has gotten involved: http://www.cuph.org/projects/ses-and-race/ “Infant mortality and poor birth outcomes are major public health issues in the United States that disproportionately affect African American families. Among 42 reporting states for the years 2003 to 2005, Wisconsin had the second highest African-American infant mortality rate at 16.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, approximately 3 times the rate for Wisconsin whites.1 The City of Milwaukee, home for over half (63%) of the African-American population in Wisconsin, experiences similar racial disparities.2 Between 2003 and 2007, Milwaukee’s African-American infants were 3 times more likely to die within their first year of life than white infants, with infant mortality rates of 16.2 and 5.1, respectively.2 These racial disparities have remained consistent over the past 15 years.3 In 2007, the leading cause of African-American infant deaths in the City of Milwaukee was disorders related to low birth weight and preterm birth.2 From 1993 to 2006, African-American women were 3 times more likely to have low birth weight and preterm infants than white women.3 In a study examining health outcomes in the City of Milwaukee by socioeconomic status (SES), the authors found that health disparities existed among all SES groups; in particular, the Lower SES group was 1.9 times more at risk than the Upper SES group of experiencing an infant death, with IMRs of 14.5 and 7.7, respectively.4″
This info is very interesting…the disparity of death rates related to SES would make sense based on the low birth weight and pre-term birth. We are discussing a complicated issue here which is not necessarily related to co-sleeping but a whole myriad of factors that lead to an infant’s death in the first year of life.
This is still not an excuse for Milwaukee’s poster campaign.
Hmmm, so they should make their PSA’s more like if you don’t eat an apple a day it’s like eating a knife? Get to work on that PSA for Milwaukee 
. Someone must think that this is why all these babies are dying and then threw a whole lot of money at it. PSA’s are meant to be shocking and catch people’s eye. While it’s an absurd analogy and instead of offering free cribs they should be offering education it’s not entirely a bad thing to warn people about the possible dangers. And again, I do co-sleep, but I don’t drink, do drugs, and I’m a pretty light sleeper. I do think someone’s heart was in the right place here. Maybe someone who lost a child to co-sleeping?
I agree that someone’s heart is probably in the right place, but they obviously didn’t do their research. My guess is that it isn’t a parent who lost a child to co-sleeping. It is probably a public health official/coroner who sees the dead babies and whose own baby slept happily in a nice crib.
Are African-American mothers more likely to co-sleep? I’m not seeing a correlation between the problem and the proposed solution
I think Elizabeth’s point was that there isn’t a connection between the problem she described and the City of Milkwaukee’s proposed solution (don’t co-sleep!).
Someone else pointed out that poorer families are more likely to live in crowded homes and put the baby to sleep where they can–with mom or possibly other relatives or siblings. They’re more likely to be unable to afford enough cribs for each baby/tot. At the same time (due to nutrition, smoking and prenatal care issues) more likely to have pre-term or low-weight infants at high risk for SIDS. And far less likely to breast-feed. All of which points to long-term education, support for moms and access to resources (and drug/alcohol/smoking treatment when needed) as ways to save kids. I’d guess these posters aren’t really helpful.
Love your ad! And of course I agree, education on safe co-sleeping (and while we’re at it properly defining co-sleeping and bed-sharing) is the right way to go about this.
Just to add a data point, I have a BMI of, I don’t know, way over 32, and have bed-shared with no worries. I don’t have sleep apnoea, though.
Co-sleeping is actually much SAFER than driving. Ie: the number of children under 1 who die in car accidents in the US each year is much higher than the number of who die from co-sleeping deaths.
Death under 1 year is also associated most highly with pre-term delivery, lack of pre-natal care, and low birth weight.
Want to help the babies of f Milwaukee? Give their teenage mothers mandatory sex ed, free contraceptives, free pre-natal and materal health care, breastfeeding support and substance abuse counselling ( including smoking cessation help). I promise you you will save more babies.
But that costs more than scary posters.
100% agree with this. But… plenty of teenage mums are doing a brilliant job, and plenty of mothers in their twenties don’t seem to be. How do you identify at-risk households, and how do you help people who refuse help?
Hi
Offerering free contraception, help, medical care and counselling will reach people who need them. It is not a teenage mom vs. 20s issue but a planned and supported pregnancy vs. unplanned and unsupported.
Aurora – Please go have a look at the stats. In the first year of life, sleep related deaths are the number 1 cause of death in babies born healthy.
According to the Center for Disease Control The leading causes of death fro children under 1 year in the US are 1) Congenital defects, also known as birth defects, are problems that occur while a fetus is developing in the womb. Some of these can be prevented by prenatal care including nutritional and substance abuse counselling. 2) Preterm birth, also referred to as short gestation period, is a length of pregnancy less than 37 weeks. see above for the relevance or prenatal care. 3) Sudden infant death syndrome – which includes all unexplained deaths- in cribs or anywhere- only a very small fraction of these occur in beds- 4) Maternal complications of pregnancy- see above on prenatal care 5) Complications of the Umbilical Cord, Placenta, and Membranes- nothing to with beds or cars 6) unintentional injuries- majority of which are car accidents. As I wrote before – more babies die in cars (total) than in beds with non-drnking, non smoking parents.
Grrrr…..
It’s one thing to do put together so inflammatory as a baby sleeping with a knife, but they photographed the baby in an UNSAFE co-sleeping environment as it was. All those fluffy pillows, that comforter. Sigh.
The Milwaukee Health Department should check the statistics. They have it backward. Cosleeping is safer than sleeping alone. They should start with this article from drmomma.org called “How the Stats Stack Up: Cosleeping is Twice as Safe” http://www.drmomma.org/2009/09/how-stats-really-stack-up-cosleeping-is.html
I think health departments all over the country must have just gone to a conference where they hammered co-sleeping as the evil of all evils. Pittsburgh’s health dept is trying to get all the home visiting agencies to have a *NO CO-SLEEPING POLICY* where all mothers are told co-sleeping is NOT ALLOWED. Apparently, Pittsburgh has the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, among African-Americans. And the numbers they are trumpeting as the reason for this anti-cosleeping binge? 20 “sleep-related” deaths. There are 15,000 babies born in Pittsburgh every year. THIS IS NOT A PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY. Not to mention the fact that the “sleep-related deaths” include several incidents that have nothing to do with co-sleeping (babies on couches, etc). They don’t give detailed enough information about the causes of those deaths, and then jump on co-sleeping as the boogeyman.
I would bet my life that none of those 20 deaths were to breastfed infants intentionally sleeping with their mothers.
I work in a community-based doula agency, and our clients are exclusively very low income and generally medically under-served. I see the community first-hand. As a previous poster said, these deaths are not caused by co-sleeping, and berating mothers about co-sleeping is not going to change anything. The root cause is poverty and racism, and until that is addressed, there will be an enormous chasm of mistrust and misunderstanding between the do-gooders who have no clue, and the people they are trying to “help.”
Our local authority has that policy, too. The health visitor, who attends all accidental child deaths in the area, said that she does not agree with the policy, and that every single SIDS case she attended had smoking paraphernalia in plain sight at the time of the visit.
Funny how I raised my kids to ages 4 and 6 with co-sleeping and we’re all alive today.
Want to talk about dangers in childhood? Howe about….artificial food colouring in candy…or a regular diet of fast food. Driving them every where, even to a playdate walking distance from your house. Or shall we talk about how essential it is sending a 3 year old to full day Kindergarten because that is the only place where they will learn?
Pff….
Derailing…
Plenty of children thrive in educational environments outside of their home, from very young ages. Is it essential? I’d say in many instances it is – particularly in those home environments with unstable caregivers or unsafe living conditions. And not everyone lives within walking distance to.. anything. Or can afford (or is educated about) anything but non-nutrient-dense food.
Back on track…
Cosleeping, in unsafe environments – like a couch, or with a drunk/high parent, formula-fed-only baby, in a house filled w/cigarette smoke – can be dangerous.
It isn’t cosleeping itself, it’s how the cosleeping is done; and this campaign doesn’t address that.
All the things you mentioned do raise the risk, but so does co-sleeping itself when that environment contains pillows, blankets and adult mattresses – basically any material that can trap exhaled CO2 and inhibit the free movement of oxygen. This is *especially* true for babies under 4 months of age.
I have four kids, and I did modified co-sleeping with the younger two. My husband and I had spearate rooms at the time because he worked the night shift, so I brought the baby to my bed any time she woke after 3 am. I am a heavy sleeper in the first part of the night, so I wanted that rule for safety. I had a firm bed and kept the house warm so I only needed blankets on my feet. In other words, I did just what you ar talking about: I mad co-sleeping safer and did it anyway.
I do think that part of our cultural paranoia on this issue grows from our shrinking family size. Urging parents to endure the sleepless nights of infancy in the worst way possible is something we culturally tolerate because we expect people to only have one or two infants. If the cultural norm were still large families, and multiple infancies took up twenty years of the parent’s life, it would be much harder to convince them that good parents were willing to wake every hour for a back-sleeping crib baby “for the baby’s safety.”
good point.
Funny ad. I think they’re trying to do the right thing. People who believe something advocate for it, so they’re not dumb or doing a disservice; they’re actually trying to do a service. According to their stats it’s dangerous, so that’s why they’re advocating against it. I’m sure that, with training and thoughtfulness, it’s super safe to cosleep. Also, Annie’s stats in another page say that under 9 kids die per 100,000 from sleeping with an adult. I don’t know how that is per incident, but I can guess that the odds are still amazingly low for any particular incident, so the overwhelming good bet is that the baby will survive.
Simply repeating weird stats like “Hey, I had 6 kids and they’re all alive” or “out of all kids very few died” doesn’t really say anything. Neither of course does “Sleeping in a big bed is like sleeping with a knife.” I wish someone could dig up real information, or explain how the kids die. To that end I looked at the study you quote from the coroner of Ontario, and it looks like the main objection is unsafe sleeping environment, which mainly means anything that a baby could fit into or get suffocated by, like the gaps between a bed and wall, big heavy bedding, etc. Totally doesn’t seem like they’re targeting co-sleepers, just the unsafe sleeping environment. I guess most of the under 12 month deaths happen in an unsafe environment. Obviously the parents who have a safe environment aren’t in those stats, and neither are those with an unsafe environment but whose children survived (and so many more did survive than died). Anyway, the message is sleep safely because babies die by getting suffocated in beds.
In the meantime, I don’t know why everyone is so against a group of people who are trying to do a good thing, according to their best knowledge. If you can do it safely then advocate that, but why always jump on the people who are trying to do good?
I’m against these ads because I think scare tactics and telling people they “should never” are not an effective way to get a message across. As someone said above, people still smoke even knowing the consequences. People will look at these ads and say, “Pfft, as if. I’m not a careless parent. I’m going to do what I want.” The message is just way over the top. Now, an ad campaign that said, “Co-sleeping is beneficial to mothers and babies. Learn how to do it safely,” would probably get a lot more people to change their sleeping environments to make it safe.
Yeah, but the coroner or health department doesn’t know whether co-sleeping is beneficial. They know it’s not because all they see are the deaths and hospital stats.
Also, anti-smoking ads/education are having effects, with smoking rates declining over the past 40 years. Similarly in that Ontario study they credit a reduction in infant deaths (I didn’t drill in so I don’t know how valid) to infant sleep education campaigns. Same report found that vast majority (75%) of unexplained infant deaths involved unsafe sleeping and of those over half (53%) was bed sharing. They simply put two and two together to conclude that parents don’t really understand how easy it is for an infant to suffocate, whether from being face down in a heavy blanket or in an adult bed or whatever. That’s all. I think it’s very responsible of them to take that message out.
That said, you’re probably right that the ads will be ignored by most or will be misinterpreted. They are not very educational. And the baby will probably survive no matter which choice you take.
Right, smoking is not the best comparison, which is why Annie’s car riding comparison is so perfect. If coroners or whoever is sponsoring these ads don’t know the facts about how co-sleeping is beneficial and can be done safely, they shouldn’t be putting out an ad. Ignorance is no excuse for using such misleading ads.
Take, for example, the knowledge that leaving infants to sleep or lay in car seats for extended periods of time is dangerous to baby’s development. I’ve seen information reminding parents to not do this, but I’ve yet to see an ad that tells parents to never transport a baby in a bucket seat outside the car ever.
Really, when we look at the baby items and baby care techniques that get the loudest “Don’t ever!” messages they are often things that fall into the attachment parenting philosophies (co-sleeping, babywearing, home birth*). That says something interesting about how it’s not facts or even good sense that are pushing these messages. It is corporate profits (cribs, strollers/car seats, hospitals).
*Home birth is not a strictly AP thing, and plenty of AP parents give birth outside of their home, I’m sure. But, there does seem to be a lot of overlap.
Yep, totally agree with you except that I don’t particularly think they’re against any form of parenting, only that they’re reporting facts they’ve observed.
For me, it’s just common sense (cliche I know). Anyone who reads a “Don’t Ever” message and is stunned into following it is just lazy. Don’t ever jump out of a plane! (unless you have a parachute and are trained to use it). Don’t be unemployed (unless you are a business person and can make much more money than at a job). Don’t let your baby sleep in bed with you (unless you can do it safely). Hope that nobody lives their lives according to posters 
I’ve never seen anything about car seats … I’m going to check it out! If the baby is sleeping in the car, we leave him in the seat until he wakes up!
Okay, not meaning to argue with you exclusively, I think we agree on the basics. But, these ads are not reporting the facts. That’s the problem. Sharing a bed with your baby is no where near as dangerous as letting her sleep with a knife. It is an incredulous comparison and doesn’t convey anything truthful about safe infant sleep.
If the ads just stopped with the actually unsafe sleeping picture Cagey pointed out (loose, bulky bedding and pillows) and said this is unsafe and then show a picture of a safe sleep environment (even if it was a crib) I’d not be so critical.
Heh – yeah – naps in car seats are likely more dangerous than co-sleeping. Around the time my daughter was born a number of children passed away due to positional asphyxiation in their car seats so it made my radar. Many car seat manufacturers went on record at the time to state that car seats are intended to keep infants safe in a crash and are not designed to be a safe sleeping environment (or something to that effect). I talked about it here http://parenthood.phibian.com/?ID=150 on my blog, and there are a few links to more information about that if you are interested.
The short version though: if you let your infant sleep in the car seat, you should be continuously monitoring their breathing.
Alex:
They may be trying to do good, but they aren’t.
The Ontario Coroner and the Milwaukee health Department are targeting co-sleepers. They both make a blanket statement that bed sharing is dangerous and that sleeping on the back, in a crib with nothing but a fitted crib sheet is the only safe place to sleep.
The Ontario Coroner is criticizing “unsafe sleep environments”. However, they define any scenario in which an infant is sharing a sleep surface with someone else to be an unsafe sleep environment. That is simply not true. In fact, some studies have shown that it is safer to bed share with an adult (when safety precautions are taken) than to sleep in a crib. With all the crib recalls in recent years, I don’t have a lot of confidence in the safety of cribs either.
For many parents, co-sleeping is the only way to get a decent night’s sleep. We didn’t plan to co-sleep with our son, but it was the only way that anyone got any rest in our house. If I had seen and believed a message like the one that so many health authorities are having to send, I would have been getting up every 20 minutes to attend to my baby or leaving him to cry alone in another room. Neither of those scenarios are acceptable to me, but they are both better than having a dead baby, so if I really believed the message, I would have endangered my own health or that of my baby in order to not have a dead baby.
My problem with the Ontario Coroner reports is that they lump all forms of bedsharing and cosleeping together (which technically doesn’t necessarily equal bedsharing).
Some of those unsafe sleep environments included “bedsharing” on hideabeds, pullout couches and ordinary couches. Which is clearly completely different from a proper co-sleeping setup.
I find it offensive as my baby sleeps with me and until he did so it was hell trying to get any peace in the night. I would never do anything to harm him and to suggest that him sleeping with me is like sleeping with a knife, for goodness sake. Safe cosleeping should be encouraged as it will reduce postnatal depression as the mothers will be better rested and more relaxed. Mothers should be encouraged to do whatever they can to get more rest as long as it is safe and heathy for baby. What are the SIDS rates for Asian and African countries where cosleeping is the norm, there is no such thing as cribs in many countries.
Sigh, Same old hashing of the Wealthy Western World and her weird double standards… Apart form the fact that co-sleeping works… not just for western families in ridiculously large homes… but for most of the world where homes for whole families are actually one or two rooms and the only way to keep warm or safe is to co-sleep. This ad might tell the world that co-sleeping is lethally dangerous… but the rest of the world seems to be surviving on co-sleeping, in fact in the rest of the world there are just bigger issues… lack of water, lack of nutrition, HIV/Aids… I won’t go on!!!
This: “Health authorities need to stop scaring and shaming parents and instead teach them about the pros and cons of different sleep options and about the things that they can do to make their chosen sleep environment as safe as possible.”
I don’t understand why some doctors, nurse, health dept, cannot work WITH parents. My husband and I both have MDs, and we co-slept with our babies. We created a safe co-sleeping environments, and I know that co-sleeping helped me to breastfeed with more success and to be close to my babies at a time when both of us needed to be shaping that bond. We loved co-sleeping, and we have at times gone back to it with our now 5 and 2 year old when needed.
PS. I saw an ad for a mattress with a dad and baby co-sleeping, and I meant to send it to you. Now I need to dig it out!
awful..and creepy. Are the babies supposed to look dead? 
[...] in Parenting says in Fun With Analogies “Health authorities need to stop scaring and shaming parents and instead teach them about the [...]
I had a crib, but never used it. I co-slept with both of my children and it was wonderful–socially, emotionally and medically. This ad is completely irresponsible. They don’t list any of the benefits of co-sleepings, and just focus on an “abstinence only” style of propaganda. Educate, don’t preach!! Plus, I find it hard to believe that crib sleeping is any safer. People put pillows and blankets in cribs all the time. Lastly, most cultures around the world have been co-sleeping for centuries. I don’t believe that they have a higher infant death rate because they don’t use cribs. That’s ridiculous!
What bothers me about the poster is that multiple guidelines for safe co-sleeping are being broken, in addition to the sleeping position of the baby.
The bed in the poster looks soft and there are fluffy blankets and pillows near the baby. The baby is laying on his belly (can’t tell how old the baby is, our baby has slept on his belly since he learned to roll over) and I can’t tell what type of bed/surface is there.
I bed-shared with my first for 20 months and my 2nd slept in our room for 6 months and now is in a crib in the other room that he shares with his brother.
Absolutely. Co-sleeping is easiest for moms and babies, and there are safe ways to do it (like sidecarring a crib). And I’m pretty sure that, if parents were so stupid as to leave a knife with a sleeping baby, there would be more than 8.8 deaths per 100,000–and that doesn’t include injuries. These posters are completely unfounded and incorrect, plus they do nothing to solve the problem!
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/133552808.html
“Minutes before city officials unveiled a new safe-sleep advertising campaign Wednesday, the medical examiner’s office announced that a 7-week-old baby was found dead on Milwaukee’s south side after co-sleeping with his or her mother.
The infant, whose gender was not released, is at least the ninth Milwaukee baby to die this year while in an unsafe sleep environment. Details of the child’s death will be released following an autopsy, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner said.”
9 deaths this year. Something has to be addressed.
thats very true something should be. but its not from cosleeping itself. if it were would would see the same high numbers all over the world.
they need to educate. thats all it comes down to. Improper technique in any sleep environment will cause danger. I bet 90% of these poor babies deaths were more accidental cosleep then regular aware of the situation.
Yes, I’m sure most of these were accidental. I agree that improper techniques in any co-sleeping situation is dangerous and should be talked about.
The problem is that this is NOT about women who made choices (educated) choices to co-sleep. This has nothing to do with SIDS or formula feeding or vaccines (although these could be factors and are other discussions althogether). This is about women who do not know how to properly co-sleep. Or, do not have other choices. There needs to be education and because the lack of money/people to address each family, there needs to be a greater outreach. Yeah, this ad is sort of tasteless and people outside of Milwaukee see it more as an attack on ALL co-sleeping mothers. But if it helps one woman realize they need to create a better co-sleeping environment (if thats what they choose to do), then it has done its job.
I think a Pack N Play is a relevant solution. Not ideal but a step in the right direction.
One of the women were breastfeeding their child on a couch and smothered their child. This isn’t just about those horrible formula feeding mothers. Yes, encouraging breastfeeding may help but it is not going to solve the problem and those who think so are disillusioned.
So instead of talking about how we all successfully co-sleep (I partially co-sleep), lets talk about the real problems and what this ad is really targeting.
Rachey:
My impression was that this ad is targeting anyone who shares a bed with their baby. It explicitly says “babies can die when sleeping in adult beds”. It doesn’t say “babies can die if you fall asleep on the couch”.
This video from FOX news gives some good perspective on the issue too: http://www.phdinparenting.com/2010/05/05/fox-news-video-on-bed-sharing/
I agree. They should be educating, not just saying “don’t do it”. Because as Annie points out, it’s going to happen anyway. Parents need to know what the risks are and how to lessen them.
And, sadly, I would be interested to know how many infant deaths have occurred among babies in cribs in the same area in the same period of time (after all, SIDS has been called “crib death” — tragically, infants still die, even when we don’t know why, even when we do things as “recommended”). Possibly some of those have included risk factors such as smoking, heavy bedding. Yet health officials warn against those risk factors, not just crib sleeping itself.
Rachey:
Yes, something probably does need to be addressed. If 9 infants had died in car accidents this year, something would need to be addressed too, but it wouldn’t be telling parents not to take their child in a car.
Just saying 9 deaths this year in an unsafe sleep environment is not enough. What made it unsafe?
- Was there heavy bedding involved?
- Had the parents been drinking or doing drugs?
- Are the parents smokers?
- Does the mother breastfeed or formula feed?
- Were they sleeping on a regular bed with a firm mattress or were they on a couch, recliner, pillow top mattress, etc.?
- Were these parents who PLANNED to co-sleep and took appropriate precautions or were they so completely exhausted that they collapsed with their baby in an unsafe environment?
The thing is, coming from Milwaukee, I know what these ads mean and who they are targeting. This may not be evident to people that are not from Milwaukee. These are mostly women who have not planned to co-sleep and most likely do not have a place to put their child, except with them. These are women who are most likely either drunk or on drugs. At least one was breastfeeding while intoxicated in an unsafe environment (a couch). Smoking is probably an issue.
This is not about women who safely co-sleep. If you co-sleep safely, then continue what you’re doing and don’t worry about it. This is about educating women (lets be real; low income mothers) not only about co-sleeping, but parenting in a safe and effective manner. Again, making it about us (mothers who co-sleep safely) completely disregards the problem.
Okay, fine. But why not educate these women instead of just telling them “No, never!” You don’t think that a mother who has taken her child to bed because she has no other option won’t feel like she is being demonized by an ad like this?
Rachey:
Most of the babies who die in car accidents probably do so because they weren’t in a proper car seat, because the driver was drunk or speeding or texting. But there aren’t ads saying that taking your baby in the car is like letting them play with a gun (with an unwritten footnote that if you own and know how to use a proper car seat and are a safe driver, then we aren’t really talking to you, so carry on).
I’m not suggesting that anyone disregard the problem. I am suggesting that the City of Milwaukee and other health authorities find a more nuanced solution. I think this approach is dangerous and will result in more dead babies, not fewer dead babies.
Look I totally agree with both of you. I’m not trying to start fights. Yes, education is key and maybe a more nuanced approach would be more effective. No, I don’t think women should feel demonized because she has no other choice. I also do not necessarily agree with those ads. But they are targeting a very specific situation. I’m simply saying that these co-sleeping deaths, these specific ones, are most likely tied to unsafe co-sleeping habits; including alcohol, drugs, smoking, overtiredness and unsafe environments, such as a couch or a recliner. As a mother, I had the opportunity to extensively research safe bed sharing habits and made the necessary changes to my bed and lifestyle so to do so in a safe manner. Not all mothers can do that.
This ad has gotten people talking, in a very public arena. I’ve seen this story at least 6 times today. And that’s good, because then we can talk about how to address this problem and others like it.
That’s all I’ll say about it.
I don’t know how my daughter made it to 9, what with our co-sleeping with her. it’s unpossible.
If the baby has been raised in a baby wearing family it will be ok as it knows not to touch the sharp bit of the knife
Great post
I’m going to postulate that the co-sleeping to death rate is way off. The data come from medical charts. When the doctor asks where baby sleeps, co-sleeping parents are guilted into lying to avoid the finger-wagging lecture that will follow if they admit to bedsharing. Its probably much safer than the data show.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen stats that estimate what percentage of co-sleeping babies die. I’ve only seen stats on the number of co-sleeping deaths per live birth. Similarly, the car stats that I quoted aren’t based on people who rode in cars. They are based on the overall population.
Im guilty of that. Military Doctors are very against natural parenting so i feel i have to say he sleeps in a Crib or heavy repercussions..
Courtney, there are studies that have stratified for this. Here’s one – “The risk of suffocation was approximately 40 times higher for infants in adult beds compared with those in cribs. The increase in risk remained high even when overlying deaths were discounted (32 times higher) or the estimate of rates of bedsharing among living infants doubled (20 times higher). ” http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/4/883.long
And terri How many of those were actual cosleeping or really accidents where the parents just passed out and did not happen to have their bed cosleep safe? http://www.askdrsears.com/news/latest-news/dr-sears-addresses-recent-co-sleeping-concerns
http://www.my-natural-motherhood-journey.com/only-on-fox6-is-sharing-a-bed-with-your-infant-right-or-wrong.html
There is a HUGE difference in passing out from Exhaustion while the baby is in your arms and cosleeping.
Great post Annie. Reading this made my blood boil! I am just so sick of the way society treats mothers, particularly new mothers. It isn’t helpful and it isn’t right.
And so I wrote this: http://www.amoment2think.ca/2011/11/16/leave-moms/
The real issue in Milwaukee is not co-sleeping, it is deadbeat parents who drink or do drugs and then sleep in the same bed as their children. Why is nothing being done about that?
How many hungry babies could that add feed?
This makes me sick. Your post is good but it leaves out the aspect of attached parenting. How parents for centuries have slept with their children. Communally. And now, in this grossly exaggerated culture of Independence, we want little babies who know nothing but the womb and closeness to her parent, to sleep separately, by her own little self.
That scares me.
Children separated from their parents/caregivers at night are the ones we ought to think of; not those that get the attached care that they need at night.
Reports on studies on the “risks’ of bedsharing always fail to highlight that “risky” cases involve alcohol and drugs. As in the parent was not at her full wits. And by that, I do not imply the typical sleep deprivation of a parent of a young child.
[...] and read the eloquent rebuttals of the campaign by writers such as those on : Monkey Butt Junction, PhD in Parenting, Tales of a Kitchen Witch, Mother Nature Network, The Stir, The Truth about Motherhood and probably [...]
Okay I wasn’t going to say anymore, but I thought this was interesting and just as detrimental.
I live in a smaller Indiana town. Our county has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the state and 1 out of 4 pregnant women smoke. But they had an article this morning about how our county had 3 co-sleeping related deaths last year (I don’t know the circumstances). Here are some choice quotes:
“According to the Indiana Department of Child Services, a baby’s risk of dying is 40 times greater while sleeping in an adult bed than in a crib.”
“Angebrandt said other Indiana counties have erected billboards to teach parents about the dangers associated with sleeping with a baby. In Milwaukee, a series of billboards was unveiled last week that shows a baby lying in a bed next to a large knife with text that reads, “Your baby sleeping next to you can be just as dangerous.”
“All it takes is a little education, a little knowledge,” Heimann said.
“If we can get involved early, we can get the problem resolved before there’s harm.”’
“But repeatedly, year after year, we have the loss of a baby due to co-sleeping,” she said. “It’s preventable. We need to do more education.”
What is interesting to me is other cities are going to take Milwaukee’s ad campaign and probably adapt it for their own “co-sleeping problem”.
You state, “I live in a smaller Indiana town. Our county has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the state and 1 out of 4 pregnant women smoke.”
Seems to me that the billboard ads this city should be running are “Consider adoption” ads. If there’s that high of a teen pregnancy rate, and they obviously aren’t educating themselves on proper pre-natal care (smoking), then I’m assuming that most of them don’t have as much interest in the overall health and well-being of the child either. Telling these “kids” to get a crib is not going to be the solution. I live in a city where a 20 year old mother was arrested yesterday for killing her own baby just because he was crying. The mother came home drunk (she’s 20) at 2:30am, and at some point, the baby started crying, so she took him out of his crib, beat it to death and dumped his body in the woods near her house, went back home and called 911 to report him “missing”. She was arrested less than 24 hours later. These kids having kids who aren’t ready and aren’t willing to be young mothers need to SERIOUSLY consider adoption. It’s the best way to keep their babies safe. A crib can only do so much. This 13 month old who died had a crib, but he was taken out of it to get beaten to death. A lot of good the crib did, huh?
Rachel said, “I live in a smaller Indiana town. Our county has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the state and 1 out of 4 pregnant women smoke.”
Seems to me that the billboard ads this city should be running are “Consider adoption” ads. If there’s that high of a teen pregnancy rate, and they obviously aren’t educating themselves on proper pre-natal care (smoking), then I’m assuming that most of them don’t have as much interest in the overall health and well-being of the child either. Telling these “kids” to get a crib is not going to be the solution. I live in a city where a 20 year old mother was arrested yesterday for killing her own baby just because he was crying. The mother came home drunk (she’s 20) at 2:30am, and at some point, the baby started crying, so she took him out of his crib, beat it to death and dumped his body in the woods near her house, went back home and called 911 to report him “missing”. She was arrested less than 24 hours later. These kids having kids who aren’t ready and aren’t willing to be young mothers need to SERIOUSLY consider adoption. It’s the best way to keep their babies safe. A crib can only do so much. This 13 month old who died had a crib, but he was taken out of it to get beaten to death. A lot of good the crib did, huh?
see really the saddest part is The instances I have heard about has nothing to do with Cosleeping.
Passing out drunk on the sofa with a baby isnt cosleeping. Passing out while feeding the baby in bed isnt cosleeping, thats accidentally passing out from lack of sleep. So now In Wisconsin trying to pass an anti cosleeping law all parents will be terrified to fall asleep around their babies for fear of Prosecution, and even more people will be passing out from exhaustion. I really cant believe how stupid the state and county officials are being about this. Its really disturbing.
Has anyone seen the Kohl’s “Safe at Home” billboards they had around a while back? I don’t remember exactly what the billboard looked like, but here’s what I found online. “Your baby should always sleep alone… in an empty crib…” http://www.texaschildrens.org/carecenters/injuryprevention/kohls_safe_at_home.aspx
I haven’t shopped at Kohl’s since.
No, I hadn’t seen those. Ugh.
http://www.askdrsears.com/news/latest-news/dr-sears-addresses-recent-co-sleeping-concerns
Addresses the science behind safe cosleeping.
[...] with Your Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Cosleeping Fun with Analogies: Co-Sleeping and Knives, Car Travel and Guns Common Sense and [...]
I have mixed feelings about this ad. As a co-sleeping mom, I HATE IT when co-sleeping is made out to be the bad guy, when really it’s unsafe sleeping conditions in general (soft bedding, intoxicated parents, etc) that is causing the problem.
But from a public health perspective I can see why it’s easier to get one definitive message out (DON’T do X) than many nuanced messages (here’s how to co-sleep safely, consider not co-sleeping if x, y, z…)
Here’s my experience with “early outreach”. A day after my 2 1/2 year old daughter Clara was born (at home, normal delivery) she turned blue several times in a row. Though we never did find out exactly why, the assumption is that she had a few minor seizures due to bleeding on the brain, probably caused by a quick delivery.
Anyway, she was hospitalized at our nearest level III NICU, but after a few days seemed totally normal and healthy. Unfortunately she’d had some suspicious blood work so they wanted to keep her in to finish a round of antibiotics (10 days.) I was so freaked out by the whole experience that I just went with it.
For the last 7 days of her stay, I almost completely took over her care. The nurses checked on her every four hours, and I’d usually go off and try to get some real sleep in the middle of the night, but otherwise, it was pretty obvious I knew what I was doing. I talked with the nurses enough that they must have understood that I was an experienced, confident, educated mom.
The last couple of days we were moved into what they called the “Parent Training” room (UGH) where there was a private bathroom and two little sofa beds. I actually did not co-sleep with Clara, though I really wanted to, because the beds were so narrow that I was afraid she’d be buried in my armpit or fall off. (Also, did I mention the whole hospital experience had me freaked out?) But I did bring her into the bed to nurse…lying down, of course.
Early in the morning one of the nurses happened to come in while we were cuddling/nursing on the sofa bed. She didn’t say anything at the time, but about an hour later came back and lectured me about the dangers of co-sleeping: “I have seen some really awful stories. I want you to never sleep in bed with your baby.” I was completely dumbfounded. This was not “public health”, this was a nurse lecturing an experienced, educated, reasonable mom of five in a setting where I could not get away or even defend myself (we were going through her check-out paperwork and the last thing I wanted to do was delay the process in any way, and I was so freaked out by the “authority” figures and all the hospital procedure that I was, frankly, too scared to make a fuss.)
It’s easy enough to ignore ads, billboards and commercials that don’t seem to be aimed at me, specifically. Not so easy to ignore or disregard a health “authority” lecturing me while I was in a vulnerable position. What killed me about it was that there was absolutely no room allowed for nuance, no recognition of my status as a smart, conscientious mom, the expert on my own baby. Just a lecture, as though I was planning to go home, do some meth, chase it down with a bottle of vodka and then perch my baby atop a nice fluffy pillow on a waterbed. I’m sure she meant well, but I felt worse at that moment than I had the entire rest of the hospital stay. And it didn’t help my insecurity about taking my baby home, either.
Fortunately I got over it pretty quickly. Once I was out of the hospital setting it’s amazing how fast my baby stopped seeming fragile and helpless and how readily I got my confidence back. But again, she was my fifth baby. Imagine if she’d been my first or even second?
That’s what scares me, honestly, more than billboards or public health efforts. It’s health officials scaring people in a personal, one-on-one way. And not just the “intended audience” we keep talking about here, either.
I just want to applaud this comment. That’s the heart of the issue isn’t it? That this may not just scare the parents who would do something to make the sleep environment unsafe, but that it may also scare parents who would be willing to learn the safe guidelines and would happier and more rested if they bed-shared.
It’s similar to the issue of formula ads. We, women who tend to read blogs like this, love to say how we are not influenced easily by advertisements, but then we aren’t the intended target. There are women (and men) who are easily influenced and we do them a disservice by not trying to provide them with accurate information.
I love your analogy, it’s perfect and your poster is priceless! Can you send it to the folks that made the baby in bed with the knife …ha!
[...] campanha contra a cama compartilhada baseou-se em estudos que faziam ligação entre esse antigo hábito familiar e casos de morte por [...]
[...] Annie who blogs at PhD in Parenting has provided an intelligent response. You can read it here. As Annie points out, co-sleeping is statistically as dangerous as travelling by cars. So [...]
[...] Annie at PhD in Parenting gave a great response to the shameful advertisement from the city of Milwaukee in Fun With Analogies [...]
This is my favorite post of yours ever.
Thanks!
[...] First is PhDinParenting’s comparison of car travel and cosleeping. [...]
I love this post; I’ve often thought there was a parallel between cosleeping and driving, in that rather than walk, we try our hardest to make driving as safe as possible. I think, though, that this post implies that cosleeping and driving are equally dangerous. It is my understanding that driving is the leading cause of death (approximately 300 deaths per year in Canada). I am not sure how many deaths we have attributed to cosleeping, but I’m pretty sure it would be less than 300 per year. SIDS is approximately 150 per year: I imagine that cosleeping deaths would be fewer simply because of the attention our public health gives to carseat safety and SIDS, but I could be wrong.
At any rate, I saw a few people share this post on Facebook and state that driving and sleeping with your baby were of equal risk, when I think in fact that they are not. One blogger says this about your post: As Annie points out, co-sleeping is statistically as dangerous as travelling by cars.” (here is her blog post: http://lilsnowflakes.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/co-sleeping-and-scare-tactics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+npnVolunteersViaNpnInGoogleReader+%28NPN+Volunteer+Posts%29 )
I LOVE your ad, with the baby and the gun! That made me laugh pretty hard. It is interesting how we perceive risk, and also how culture gets very entangled with behaviour.
I also get quite irritated with the Milwaukee ads because it echoes for me the ad phenomenon Gabrielle Palmer mentions in The Politics of Breastfeeding, where physicians were running public health campaigns disdaining the “Ignorant Mother” and promoting public education (on the benefits of formula), and blaming ignorant mothers for the infant mortality rate. The Milwaukee ads belittle parents by fear mongering. Rather than scolding parents, disseminating information is a far less arrogant approach. Give facts, give information, and allow parents to decide. That is what informed choice is all about: shocking images simply ignite divisiveness and produce fear and guilt amongst parents. Grr. There is a blog carnival coming up on the benefits of cosleeping! I’m going to participate. Here’s a link; http://monkeybuttjunction.com/2011/11/17/safe-cosleeping-blog-carnival-call-for-submissions/
Hopefully my links don’t make this wind up in your sp*m box!! I just wanted to add to the conversation!
There are fewer co-sleeping deaths per year than there are driving deaths, but there are also fewer babies (that would be in “danger” from co-sleeping) than there are people (that would be in “danger” from car travel). That is why I calculated the co-sleeping numbers as deaths per live birth, whereas I calculated the driving numbers as deaths per population. It still isn’t perfect because not every baby co-sleeps and not every person rides in a car and we don’t have exact stats for the percentages for either of those, but it is close enough to draw a parallel.
okay, thank you! That makes sense! =)
Has anyone called Milwaukee to tell him how wrong they are? Presented FACTS about cosleeping and let them know That they need to show how to do it safely not demonize it? Anyone have the contact information to the Health department there? I know its a long shot because any government office thinks they know everything and can not be told different but someone needs to DO something. Last news report I saw said they were going to try and make co-sleeping Illegal in all of Wisconsin!!
Now I know they cant police the bedrooms but they are planning on prosecuting any parent that fell asleep with their baby in their arms if that baby tragically dies for Murder!
[...] in which to drive with our children through the proper usage of car seats. (Melissa’s Note: PhD in Parenting also commented on this, click to see her post)A February 1992 Congressional Budget Office Staff [...]
[...] just like choosing to wear a seatbelt or not wear a seatbelt when driving a car (and interestingly, this author compared the statistics and found co-sleeping equally as risky as riding in a car in Canada). I am by no means making light [...]
[...] Fun with Analogies: Co-Sleeping and Knives, Car Travel and Guns (phdinparenting.com) [...]
[...] with Your Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Cosleeping Fun with Analogies: Co-Sleeping and Knives, Car Travel and Guns Common Sense and Cosleeping Safe Cosleeping My Baby Sleeps With [...]
[...] sharing were not impressed with the Milwaukee department of health’s campaign. In the words of one blogger, “Statistically, co-sleeping is as dangerous as traveling by care… Health authorities need [...]
