Ins and Outs of Bed Sharing & Doing It Safely.
@LOUISEAGNEWPHOTOGRAPHY
Our babies are born vulnerable, small and neurologically immature compared to many other mammals, and develop over a longer period than most other animal offspring. When your baby emerges from the womb their immediate instinct is to be close, and to stay close. This is how it has been throughout history; infants have been carried and slept close by to their caregivers for millions of years of human life. It is an innate biological drive designed to keep our infants safe through the dark of the night.
Humans have always been a carrying species, as we evolved and stood upright millions of years ago we co-evolved to hold onto and keep our infants close. There is mountains of evidence that staying close has wide ranging effects on the physiological, epigenetic, and socio-emotional outcomes of our children. It is your very own body that is the co-regulator of your infant, your breathing affects their breathing, your heart rates affect theirs, their brain waves mirror your own, this does not cease at night. It is a beautiful system that we now find ourselves moving so far away from.
It makes complete evolutionary sense that our babies want to remain close throughout the night, perhaps more so than even in the daytime. It's not a surprise when you place them down into a cot or other separate sleep surface they rouse and cry for you. Nighttime is a time of vulnerability for such an underdeveloped being, in slumber they are dropping their guard even more and only have their caregivers to rely upon to protect them, their primitive brain is no different to our ancestors. Your baby believes they need you close to survive.
It's in our Biology
This laying down on a sleep surface activates the ancient moro reflex, where our baby feels as though they are falling. It startles them into awake awareness, for good reason. The Moro Reflex has developed through years of evolution to protect the infant during the times we lived as carrying mammals. If they fell from our bodies while they slept they would instinctively rouse and grab for us. Unless you’re blessed with a little chiller then it is so common for an infant to panic when we place them down in a cot. But we mothers are just being told to persist when this happens through our exhaustion and given little option or education otherwise.
Throughout history our infants need to be close through the night has been fulfilled through bed sharing with parents, in fact it is a practice that outside of Western cultures continues in many parts of the world today. But bed sharing has been demonised in the West, touted as unsafe at all costs. We are educated antenatally with fear and scare mongering that we are putting our children in imminent danger if we choose to ever bedshare.
The problem is not with bedsharing itself, if it is done safely - it is in the fear and misunderstanding around how to bedshare that is where it becomes unsafe.
The controversy surrounding bed sharing
To bedshare or not comes in a close second to sleep training or not as the most highly debated topic in the parenting sphere. But this concept of not having a child sleep in the same space as a parent is a relatively new phenomenon to the human race. It was only when we hit the industrial revolution and the cries from male paediatricians and psychologists were “individualism at all costs!” And so it began to be recommended that infants sleep alone.
If we look way back to history there was also the influence of communicable diseases that were not yet widely understood or managed. Therefore it was recommended by medical professionals to keep babies separate from mothers so as to keep them safe. At the same time, with the rise of industrialisation and separate rooms being a sign of wealth - houses became bigger and more separate.
Following that up with the rise of sleep training and extinction techniques thanks to Ferber & friends in the 1980’s it became the done thing in Western Society to leave children alone to “self-settle” or cry themselves to sleep. Not only in their own sleep space but their own room. All so the parents were not burdened through the night, but this way of thinking has many costs, which I talk about in this community often.
What this rise of separation during the night has actually led to is a pandemic of unsafe bedsharing. It has led to a generation or two of parents never being educated on how to bed share safely. This is despite the fact that through the early months of child rearing the exhaustion is high and up to 60% of parents in the USA alone admit to bed sharing at some point or another without planning to.
Let's also consider that the patriarchal led sleep industry has pounced on the data that suggests that bed sharing is unsafe, and hollered from all corners that it should never been done - full stop. But when we look at the data, what we see is that many of the bed sharing related accidents or fatalities arise in unsafe situations, such as sharing sleep spaces with an intoxicated adult, sleeping on a couch or chair. While I agree these things are never safe, in most studies they are lumped together with those bedsharing safely, highly skewing the data.
We are not to blame.
And so parents today find themselves in situations of exhaustion, having never been taught to bed share safely, with an infant who just wants to stay close and, falling asleep in unsafe situations at no fault of their own, for they didn’t know any difference, they just were not given the right information.
We also can’t go past this discussion without mentioning that the multi million dollar, crib and infant formula industry are often the financial backers of a lot of the studies that come out on bedsharing. And would they really want to publish a study that lets people know they no longer need their products? I think not.
So what is the solution?
We need to educate all parents on how to bedshare safely whether they plan to or not. We need to help parents make sense of the risks involved and teach them how to minimise these.
In all honesty there isn’t any situation in which we put our children that doesn’t pose some inherent risk. How we approach all other situations is by risk minimisation instead, why can we not do the same with bed sharing? Why can parents in the west not be given the information on how to bed share correctly antenatally along with all the other risk minimisation strategies they learn, such as how to safely bathe a child and how to safely secure them in a car??
Here is that missing information:
It is likely you were never given any education on what safe bed sharing looks like so I want to share below this snippet of my sleep guide - Sleep Matters, and give you all the information you need.
How to bed share safely
Baby needs to be on their back to sleep at all times. Once you feed your baby in bed, roll them back onto their back.
Check for strangulation risks such as loose cords by the bed or long hair (tie it up!)
Consider a floor bed or mattress on the floor as the bed should be as close to the ground as possible.
Mattress needs to be firm.
Remove all small spaces between the mattress and the wall or bedside tables - you can use pool noodles or rolled up towels.
No smoking inside the home.
Both parents need to refrain from drinking or taking drugs or any other sleep inducing medication, if this is not possible, it is not safe to bed share.
Adopt the ‘cuddle curl’ position around the baby. Check out a co-sleeping image bank from BASIS here.
Baby should be lightly dressed so as to not overheat. They will be warmed by your body heat.
Absolutely no swaddling. Your baby needs their arms out if they are sleeping with you.
No pets or other siblings in bed with the infant
Not recommended for premature infants (before 37 weeks)
Sofa, chair or such surface is NEVER safe for sleeping together.
Keep your blanket at your waist so as not to cover the baby's head.
Remove all excess pillows from the bed surface.
Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a lot of evidence about the safety of bottle-fed babies and bedsharing. So, in the spirit of risk minimisation, the current advice is that if your baby is bottle fed it is safest to have them on a separate sleep surface. The reason for this is that a breastfeeding mother will instinctively place her baby’s head near the breast, and will likely stay down here in a ‘cuddle curl’.
If a baby has never been breastfed or was breastfed for a short time, research has found that mothers will often place baby up closer to their face which means that they are more at risk of being near pillows.
It is important that you make your own informed decision about whether or not to bedshare.
Prepare to bed share even if you don’t plan to bed share.
Throughout your baby's early years there will be periods of wakeful seasons, and as long as you are educated on how to do so safely it is absolutely ok to take the path of least resistance to get you both the rest you need, even if that means bed sharing.
What most bed sharing families report is that their quality of sleep improves when they bring the infant into bed with them. Their wakes are often partial, as the baby has a quick feed and returns to a sleep state.
If done safely, bed sharing is a much safer scenario than getting up multiple times to feed, resettling, and then accidentally falling asleep with your baby in an unsafe space or situation because you are exhausted.
Bed sharing is not for everyone, but if you do choose to, as long as you choose to do so safely you can let go of the anxiety that society is feeding you. Enjoy the snuggles mama.
If you need support or help around sleep or things have suddenly changed all the info you need is in my ever popular sleep guide. Or you can reach out for a session with me deets HERE.
