Is there more information on this? This, on its face, sounds so premeditated it’s not even funny.
Just to reiterate what has been said before. When we had our baby 18 months ago we were told that the increased risk comes when a parent is intoxicated or a smoker (I guess if they smoke in bed?!). Personally, when we slept in the same bed we found that you always know where he is and so won’t roll on top of him. Just be careful to keep them up near your head/the duvet lower down.
Not a great habit for them to get into when older though!
Also they tend to take up more space than someone of their size should. On the rare occasion that we take ours into bed now he tends to lie horizontal keeping me and the wife hanging off either end. I get a kick in the face if I try to come closer…
Or, seriously overweight AND drunk. :smack:
To elfkin477:
The woman who “accidentally” rolled over on four of her own infants needs to be evaluated for Munchausen’s by Proxy. There are disturbed women who smother their own children, because they like the attention that a grieving parent receives from others.
FOUR KIDS? That’s no accident.
~VOW
That or she was a drug user, alcoholic, or had some other impairment. I have a real hard time believing anyone can do the same thing to their infant four separate times without it being intentional or neglectful.
I don’t think you are remembering that episode correctly. If it is the one I am thinking about the woman knowingly smothered, while awake, all of her children.
This is the episode I’m thinking about. Is this the one you are talking about?
I’ll note that when my son was recovering from RSV, I heard every hiccup and wheeze. Even now, at age 7, I stir when he’s having a bad dream. He also has asthma. I’m in tune to him. I took all the precautions when he was a baby when we slept in the same bed. (He really had no rollover risk - he was sleeping upright.)
I hate all of this ‘let’s train our infants to be independent by age 2 months!’ crap. Really? I’m in my twenties and I still want my mom when I’m upset.
Although my 17-year-old and my 20-year-old are still alive, I am sure science knows best.
Parenting is parenting. Sometimes, things work out. Sometimes, they don’t.
It’s a crazy, mixed-up world we live in, isn’t it?
Were the rats banished to the floor?
I think it depends on the sleepers behaviour. It be dangerous with me, I have jimmy legs and tend to do flop around like a fish in my sleep.
Yes, scientific method is a good way to determine the way the world works, but don’t let this article or Milwaukee’s campaign fool you into thinking that science has determined that co-sleeping is responsible for high infant mortality. That’s a red herring that allows officials to ignore the other indirect causes for high infant mortality, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, and access to health care.
However, it should come as no surprise that even “science” gets it wrong from time to time given the human element as so painfully demonstrated in the Tinning case from yorick73’s link. Nine children dead and several of those were attributed by the medical examiner to genetic causes. The true cause was later determined to be homicidal asphyxiation.
In fact, co-sleeping is said to be linked to SIDS, but SIDS is unexplained “cause of death.” If an autopsy can’t explain cause of death than co-sleeping can only be found to be a correlation. In order to determine that co-sleeping is a direct cause in death, there must be a found cause of death by suffocation. Only now it’s not SIDS. And now in order to determine that healthy people sleeping with healthy children causes suffocation, you must rule out any factors that may have contributed to the suffocation. It’s one thing to recommend against operating a motor vehicle while taking x medication, but it’s incorrect to say x medication causes vehicular deaths.
Further, if the powers that be really want to have an impact on infant mortality in the State of Wisconsin, perhaps they ought to be taking a closer look at the causes of death that far surpass SIDS. According to this fact sheet provided by Wisconsin’s own health department, the leading causes of death are birth defects/congenital abnormalities and disorders related to preterm birth/low birthrate. In fact, the racial disparities associated with those two causes are even more extreme than those associated with the SIDS findings. There is a direct correlation between lack of prenatal care and related socioeconomic factors and low birth rate.
Perhaps the money they are spending on this ill-conceived ad campaign could be better spent providing more comprehensive prenatal health care for its citizens, especially the socioeconomically disadvantaged ones.
As a medical examiner, I can say that the majority of infant deaths we investigate occur in the setting of bed sharing, i.e., infant sleeping on the same surface with some combination of adults, other children, sometimes pets. That said, however, it’s difficult to quantify the risk of bed sharing, as the incidence of it is not known. Perhaps a large population study could give an idea of the prevalence of that practice, but to my knowledge none has been done. Also, there is wide variation in how these deaths are certified. Some medical examiners or coroners will call any infant death where there’s no clear cause of death - and where a full investigation, autopsy and medical history review may - or may not - have been done - SIDS. Others do not recognize the term SIDS as a diagnosis at all.
There’s also simply the issue that in these cases the “real” cause of death is rarely known. A typical case is: Infant sharing a sleeping surface with one or more other people. Usually there’s one or more other “risk factors” (soft bedding, big pillows, etc). Someone then wakes up and the baby is dead. No one can recall anything different from all the other times they’ve slept this way. At autopsy the baby is otherwise perfectly healthy.
So, are you going to say someone rolled over and smothered the baby? Certainly it’s a possibility, but as you can imagine that is a very awful thing to tell someone, and if you can’t prove it…? Plus, we know babies do in fact die even in perfect sleep environments. So maybe this death, in a so-called risky sleep environment, is a “True and True but Unrelated” situation.
So not only is the prevalence of the variable - bed sharing - unknown, but the incidence of the event - infant death due to smothering - is also unknown.
The flip side is that the majority of diagnoses made by physicians, including MEs, are on a “most likely” basis. So when a healthy infant dies while sleeping in an environment where they could have been rolled onto (or could have been pushed into a nook or cranny of the bedding), what seems most likely?
The bottom line is the prevention of infant deaths. As far as that outcome goes, I hope the Milwaukee campaign is successful.
As a medical examiner are you saying that smothering a baby to death leaves no signs at all? I’m not even close to being an ME but it seems like a baby that had an adult sleeping in such a way that the baby’s face was jammed into the bedding would leave some type of telltale mark. Or, in the absence of any marks, are there any measurements that would indicate that a baby suffocated (i.e. blood CO2 levels or something similar).
There are no findings that are diagnostic.
Compressional asphyxia, such as occurs when the chest is compressed to prevent breathing, may leave petechiae (tiny dot like hemorrhages) on internal organs and mucous membranes. But these findings also overlap with classical SIDS and artifacts of resussitative efforts (such as chest compressions). Depending on the amount and pattern of distribution of these petechiae, they may be highly suggestive, but, again, not diagnostic. And then again, compressional asphyxia may leave no signs at all.
Prolonged overlay may cause a suggestive blanching or impressional pattern on the skin, which would be consistent with the baby being pressed underneath someone’s body for a prolonged period. But, who’s to say the baby was not already dead when that happened? (Indeed, one of the arguments from bedsharing advocates is that movements and other life signs of the baby is one of the things that protects them from overlay by alerting those nearby; if those signs are gone, so it goes, a sleeper would not be alerted that they are laying on the baby.)
As far as smothering - as in something covering the baby’s mouth - that leaves no signs. And as far as a biochemical test, as in blood, etc, likewise nothing.
No, I’m not talking about Marybeth Tinning, whom I’ve known about since reading a book on her in high school (I believe it’s called From Cradle to Grave). She had nine kids she deliberately murdered, not like the woman who had no idea that her kids all died because she’d rolled over on them.
The episode I mentioned seems to be called “Dead Men Talking 1x08: Ask Dr. Baden”
At the risk of hijacking this topic…how appropriate is it to, ahem, have marital relations when parents and kids are in the same bed? It just seems like a marriage-buster. If that’s what people choose to do, as long as the kids are safe I guess it’s none of my business.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure infants aren’t going to notice that sort of thing. Of course, it gets a little dicier the older they get.
I think that’s one of the reasons I don’t like the idea of co-sleeping. I have had more than a few friends who co-slept and had real problems getting their child - who was now two or three - to sleep in their own room. I know of two couples who were having marital problems due to this - the husband wanted to sleep with his wife and have a sex life, and the wife didn’t want to deal with the screaming that ensued every time the child was put into her room.
Parents who co-sleep, at what age do you transition your child to his/her own bed?