Children 'should sleep with parents until five'

"Donna Metler" ) writes:
Let's use a little common sense here. It doesn't matter whether deaths when
a child is in a parent's bed are due to smothering/suffocation or SIDS-the
baby is still dead. You have to weigh the risk factors for you between the
two. In my case, I didn't feel I could co-sleep safely, so I felt having the
baby in a controlled crib was better than having her next to my uncontrolled
(I am very capable of rolling on a cat while asleep and have fallen out of
bed before), requiring having my head elevated in order to sleep at all
body.

Good for you -- very sensible. You responded to awareness
of your own tendencies.

One can still sleep with baby nearby: in a crib beside
the bed, for example. Baby can still hear parents
breathe, and perhaps one could have one hand touching baby
sometimes, when baby seems to want/need it.

Catherine Woodgold wrote:

Vitamin C deficiency seems to be a major cause of SIDS.
(See "Every Second Child" by A. Kalokerinos.)
Vaccines apparently contribute to vitamin C deficiency.

Vitamin C gets replaced by anaprovolene in the Star Trek universe,
apparently.

Michelle
Flutist

The way I normally sleep is that I roll from one side or
the other onto my back, not onto my stomach. So if I'm
lying on my side with someone lying in front of me, that
person is in a place I wouldn't roll onto anyway even
if there were no-one there.

After I gave birth to my first baby, I didn't sleep for
3 days. Apparently there are hormones that tend to
influence mothers not to sleep as much or to sleep more
lightly in the first few days after giving birth.
This lighter sleep makes it easier to learn to sleep
with awareness of the baby so one doesn't roll onto
the baby.

I think fathers can learn not to roll onto a baby, too:
they just don't have the advantage of hormonal changes
that help in the learning process. Or not as much.
I think father's hormones do change in response to
the actions of looking after a baby, but not as
much as the mother's since she has the physical signal
of being pregnant.

Or maybe some people don't even need to learn: they
already have the habit of not rolling onto people.
One starts to roll, feels a person there, and stops.

Some people have slept with pets, so they would have
some idea as to whether they tend to roll onto them.
Not rolling off the edge of the bed is also a good sign.