The Great Co-Sleeping Survey

I just completed this survey on co-sleeping. If you have ever slept in the same bed as your baby or child, please take two minutes and complete the survey. The point of the survey is to collect data on real co-sleeping families to counter all the scare-tactics of the media and some public health campaigns.

In Philadelphia there are currently these scary ads warning parents of the dangers of co-sleeping. I have seen a few of the posters and commercials and I think they are irresponsible or at least too general. Any sleeping environment can be dangerous to an infant if there are blankets, pillows, toys, etc, that can cover or trap her. Babies die alone in their cribs too. And more often.

In Philadelphia, 43 babies died due to unsafe sleeping conditions between January 2006 and March 2007. Some of those were in their parents' beds and some were on couches and cribs. The target of these types of campaigns should be unsafe sleeping for infants, not co-sleeping which is done by families all over the world for centuries.

Here are some tips and cautions from The Sleep Foundation for preventing SIDS. One of the risk factors for SIDS is the baby sleeping alone.

Here are some safe co-sleeping tips (based on the latest research) from Dr. Sears.

Do you or have you shared your bed with your kids? Why or why not?