Pro Cosleeping Bullet Points

Cultures who traditionally practice safe co-sleeping, such as Asians, enjoy the lowest incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Trusted research by Dr. James McKenna, Director of the Mother-Baby Sleep Laboratory of the University of Notre Dame, showed that mothers and babies who sleep close to each other enjoy similar protective sleep patterns.  Mothers enjoy a heightened awareness of their baby’s presence, what I call a “nighttime sleep harmony,” that protects baby.  The co-...

 Physiological Effects of Cosleeping with Infants

when they are more used to sleeping alone, sleep differently when with when they are more used to sleeping alone, sleep differently when with their mothers. The babies seem to spend a greater percentage of their sleep time in levels 1-2 and less time at the deeper levels, exhibit more REM sleep, and are awake longer. In other words, they are more often moving among sleep levels, and they sleep lighter. Christopher Richard, Mosko, and McKenna have also found that most co-sleeping pairs spend ...

 Objections to Cosleeping with Infants

The fear of overlaying haunts many parents in Western culture today. Most believe it is possible to roll over and squish a baby or suffocate it under a mound of blankets. But as infant sleep researcher McKenna notes, babies are born with strong survival reflexes, and they will kick and scream before they let anything clog their airways. The simple evidence that most babies around the world today sleep with a parent and they are not dying from suffocation should be enough to convince parents t...

 Sleeping Arangements Across Climates

Anthropologist John Whiting found a simple association between climate and parent-child co-sleeping (among other behaviors).^ Evaluating 136 societies for which he had information. Whiting outlined four kinds of typical sleeping arrangements for a household: mother and father in the same bed with baby in another bed; mother and baby together and father somewhere else; all members of the family in separate beds; and all members of the family together in one bed. The most prominent pattern acro...

 Mark Vonnegut on Bad Science in Anti-Cosleeping Recommend...

Bad science sets out to make a point, looks neither to the left nor to the right but only straight ahead for evidence that supports the point it sets out to make. When it finds evidence it likes, it gathers it tenderly and subjects it to little or no testing. And that's exactly what the commission did in this, its first attempt to quantify the number of fatalities resulting from the practice of parents "co-sleeping" with their babies and toddlers. The study, published in the October issue of...