There’s been a lot on the news today about how parents are “ignoring the warnings” about co-sleeping with babies, and that co-sleeping has found to be a factor in almost half of cot deaths. 

I should at this point declare an interest – there’s been a cot death in my family and I’ve seen the impact it’s had on everyone, even one decade on.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice on this – physical closeness to the baby when it’s happy and relaxed is thought to help stimulate a mother’s milk production and being able to breastfeed is thought to be clearly best (although perhaps why is not quite as clear cut as had been made out by some of the more militant campaigners).

But the argument put forward by those that co-sleep – that parents and children have co-slept successfully for millions of years – doesn’t quite carry the weight they think it does.  It was once pointed out that there is no word, no equivalent of widow/widower or orphan, for parents that lose a child becoause none of us can contemplate something so awful.  This is true – and false.  Until the late 20th century, losing a child was a common experience, heartrending, awful, but common.  My own grandmother was one of ten, but only six made it to adulthood.  We have absolutely no proof that co-sleeping was or was not a factor as records of that sort of thing were not kept.  But it is reasonable to assume that if it’s a factor now, it may well have been then.

I cannot say that we have never co-slept with my son.  He’s a toddler now, and often ended up in our bed.  Sometimes it’s the only way to get any of you a night’s sleep.
But mindful of the loss our family had experienced, we were so careful throughout the first six months of his life.  Despite his colic, despite the evidence from the hospital that he would only sleep if in physical contact with me, we perservered and he slept in a crib then a cot, feet to foot-of-the-bed, with a dummy.  I fought to stay awake in nightfeeds, always going downstairs to sit upright then returning him to his cot, me to my bed.  It appears the co-sleeping death figures include falling asleep on sofas.

And in the first six months we never co-slept.  It’s just not worth the risk.
We also never let him in if we’d had a drink, and kept him in a grobag on top of our covers – we’re very lucky to have a wide bed.

Would we co-sleep if there’s a next one?  Again, certainly not in the first 6 months and ideally not in the first year.  But sometimes it’s the only way to get some rest.

So making it illegal would be too much of an overreaction.  And the police investigations after a cot death are harrowing. But parents need to know about the risks, and make responsible choices.  Even if they are tired.