When is it safe to bedshare
Co-Sleeping: The Dangers of Bed Sharing & Safe Alternatives
I'm Jamie Kondis and today I'm going to talk about a topic that we get a lot of
questions about as pediatricians and that's whether or not it's okay to sleep
or co-sleep with your baby. When we use the term co-sleeping generally as
doctors we mean sleeping with the baby in the bed with you, and that we do not
think is a good idea. There's many reasons why it's not a good
idea. One, as doctors we always know that babies are safest when they are
following the ABCs: Alone, so not sleeping with anyone else, on their back, and in a
crib. That is the safest sleep pattern for children. Now every parent says oh
I'm not gonna roll over on my baby, I'm not gonna suffocate my baby, I would
never do that, but honestly and I know this from my own experience I just had
my third baby, we sleep very soundly especially after we've just had a baby.
But that's just one risk of co-sleeping, another is you don't have that flat
surface that you have in a crib and so the baby automatically has more risk for
suffocation just due to the mattress and then also the bedding, all of the sheets, we
recommend that babies not sleep with a lot of blankets and sheets because
that's a suffocation risk as well. The American Academy of Pediatrics does
recommend not bed sharing but room sharing. It is actually safer for your
child to be sleeping in the same room as you and there are some manufactured
devices that are bassinets that really come up right up close to the bed. Or you
can put them in a pack and play and push that up, or right a bassinet push that
right up to the bed, so there's lots of ways to have your baby very near you
that isn't actually co-sleeping.
