Comment by 317070

Bed sharing isn’t just about SIDS, it’s about litterally just rolling over and smothering your child (sometimes those do get lumped in together, but increasingly they are separated if they can be).

If you are overweight, sleep on a standard western style mattress, have any sleep disorders, smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, or even some prescription medications, you are much more likely to smother your infant.

The risk of all sleep related causes of death is around 1/1000 in the US, but you can reduce that risk 100x if you follow all of the safe sleeping recommendations.

1/1000 is pretty low but it’s higher than the chance of your infant dying in a car accident, disease, or any other cause of death for full term healthy babies.

My wife (pediatric ER doctor) has had to declare numerous babies dead from a parent rolling over and suffocating their infant and usually the parents weren’t intoxicated at the time.

I have 2 kids (and a 3rd on the way). I know how hard it is to follow all the safe sleeping recommendations, but the risk is real and the cost is so high.

Some of that fear isn’t necessarily unfounded. In America the people are larger and the beds are softer. This creates a larger, deeper divot around the adult for the baby to roll in to and suffocate.

Most of the American parents I know practiced bed-sharing including myself. But we would also answer "no" when asked about at the doctor's office because that's the "right" answer. So... I am skeptical about any negative statistics on bedsharing. We're not obese and don't drink or do drugs. That probably mitigates a huge amount of associated risk.

I've come to think the American norm is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bedsharing becomes dangerous mostly when the parents fall asleep intoxicated. You might have noticed that you're much more likely to wake up with your arm partially numb if you pass out drunk than if you go to sleep sober. But because bed sharing is discouraged, it's mostly less responsible parents who do it, which creates a stronger apparent correlation with infant suffocation.

If you ask around among other parents you’re going to find that bed sharing is a lot more common than the medical community wants it to be. We had a lot of reasons for doing it and so did many of our friends.

If I recall correctly, there was some recent research connecting the cholinergic system to SIDS, pointing at possible changes in practices to reduce the risk.

> How much alcohol can a pregnant person drink? (Not too much, obviously, but is a glass of wine a couple of different days in the third trimester okay? Probably, but it varies a lot deoending on which country you're in.)

It's important to differentiate a low individual risk for you, vs what that means to a whole population.

You will easily find someone willing to say "oh I had two glasses of wine a week while pregnant and my kid was fine".

If everyone started drinking 2 glasses of wine a week in the third trimester, FAS rates will increase, and mean IQ score will dip. Will they dip by a lot? Probably not, but definitely not zero. So of course anyone in a position to make a society-wide recommendation, recommends "no alcohol".

Individual parents may look at data and say, that's a risk they're willing to take.

> But when I was an infant -- which is not that long ago, parents were advised otherwise.

So...research was done and people learned they were wrong?

I'm not quite following what you think the takeaway was here?

The "Back to Sleep" campaigns saw something like a 50% decrease in infant mortality within 12 months in the UK. It isn't really comparable to "fad diet of the year" medical advice.

For sleeping on their back. Our youngest daughter would not sleep on her back. She still sleeps on her tummy with arms folded under her. The only way she sleeps otherwise is in the car seat when properly exhausted. Put her to bed and she will turn around and fall asleep. So what does medicine say then?

> But when I was an infant -- which is not that long ago, parents were advised otherwise

Medicine is wild. Lots of things that were taken as gospel even 15 years ago have been completely flipped on their head. The NHS massively changed their advice last year on asthma treatment and it’s basically the opposite of what they said before. We’ve seen the same with musculoskeletal injuries, nerve injuries and just general recovery.

Well, hot places do tend to have indolent populations.

Humans can thrive in nonideal situations. I would say too ideal is unhealthy.

Plus the effect might be small or something easily adapted to.

Not a joke. When my daughter was younger and we were visiting the daycare (förskola) facilities around us to pick one, in one of them they didn't have a room for children to sleep indoors, they always slept outdoors (even in the winter). This daycare was very highly recommended.

Anecdotally, when my daughter was a baby and had issues falling asleep, all it took was to take her for a walk outside in negative (celsius) temperatures and it was like we gave her sleeping pills. It never failed.

I grew up in a different country, so this whole concept was alien to me and it was diametrically opposite to my instincts, but I have to say that I'm a believer now.

It's true. Though it's not about leaving them outside for the night with only a dull knife with which to fight off the wolves. It's about leaving them in their prams outside for nap time. Obviously bundled up to keep warm during winter.

We're not really concerned about baby kidnappings here, so it's not uncommon to see prams with sleeping babies outside of cafes while the mom or dad is inside having some coffee.

They're fremen: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

Here in Poland my mum used to make me sleep outside (on the balcony) when it was as low as -20°C outside. (Covered in lots of layers.) It’s definitely not just Nordics.