It is very dangerous to sleep with your baby. I know that many people in many cultures do sleep with their babies but you should not. There are several ways it can result in the baby dying:
1. You can suffocate the baby by breathing on their face while you are asleep. The baby will not cry and will not wake while this is occurring.
2. You can crush your baby by rolling on to them while you are asleep.
3. Your baby can suffocate from their nose and mouth being covered by a blanket or pillow or even the soft mattress if they are get rolled over.
Co-sleeping advocates will tell you "as long as you do it safely you can sleep with your newborn." This is false. There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn. Newborns cannot turn their heads away if you breath on them. They cannot move if you get too close. While, many parents sleep with their babies and the babies do not die that does not mean that it is safe.
That's why I made the remark about drugs, alcohol or hypermobile sleepers. My current wife, myself and my ex-wife never had an issue before babies, during and after.
It's actually not something I do while _asleep_, but when groggy. If I wake up in the middle of the night and decide I want to sleep on my side now, my sense of spatial awareness is pretty poor. I believe people can get by without issues, just thought I would pop in with an amusing anecdote :)
You can actually divide the bed into two parts: for you and for the baby, so you don't risk crushing it. The baby still feels the beats and sleeps better.
And yet, Japan where co-sleeping is the norm, seems to be tied with the Netherlands for lowest rate of sudden infant death syndrome. Tatami might be a good idea if you want to co-sleep (softer bedding increases risk).
I've read many reports and studies. My first child was 1997, and my current was born in 2014.
Parenting is a very personal issue, and I am not on a mission to change anybody's parenting decisions. At the end of the day, it is your family business. I have always questioned things, though, and I was very surprised at some of the things I learned when I first looked into co-sleeping and the warnings from mainly US institutions or government. The ads and posters are creepy to an extreme (a sleeping baby next to a meat cleaver!), and betray the scare propaganda vs. data approach [1].
>There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn.
You state this, and yet you list common sense things or precautions to take even if they are in a crib. Why not the same common sense applied to co-sleeping? Firm mattress, on back, no pillow, or headboard they can jam a bodypart through?
"The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than any of the other 27 wealthy countries..." by the CDC [2]. And this is with one of the highest expenditures on health care than other nations. And it gets worse as the baby ages in the postnatal period, so it is not just more premies or bad neonatal care where the US is not as bad.
The sharp difference is in disadvantaged or uneducated groups. A poor person's baby in another wealthier nation has more of a chance than one in the US, and that is the key to the disparity.
In one of your links they cite a waterbed! I think if co-sleeping deaths are lower elsewhere than in the US it is for lack of education, common sense, parenting knowledge or all three. I am from the US. I raised my first two there, and now I live in a very poor village in East Java, Indonesia where most of the houses have dirt floors. All of the families in this village co-sleep as far as I have seen or had answered to me. I still apply the same common sense guidelines we both have listed in our replies.
For me and my family, we feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. We kept the newborns flat on their backs with no loose sheets to entangle them, or other accessories. We have always had fairly firm mattresses. We don't drink alcohol, and we are not hypermobile sleepers. We are also strangely aware of where the baby is, and we still manage to get more sleep distributed across the night between smaller, more frequent feedings.
I loved waking up to watch my little ones' chests rise and fall! I'd say we were more diligent and aware and monitoring them against SIDS than if we had them in a crib in another room with audio monitor, across the same room, or at the bedside.
The US report which cites deaths from co-sleeping didn't bother to check or factor in drugs or alcohol. There is also the potential of the horrible MBPS (Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome) not discovered in some cases.
The article of the Arizona parents that left their 2 year old in the house alone, only to be discovered walking outside while they were gone for two hours playing Pokemon speaks to the level of idiocy of some parents, so I am sure in a country of 320 million you will have some numbers to cite if that is the sample population.
SIDS is said to increase with co-sleeping, although again, the studies are not too detailed, and the same recommendations then go on to say SIDS decreases when it's a bassinet opened to the bed as opposed to in another room or across the room.
As I said, it doesn't happen to everyone, it doesn't happen to most. But is does happen. Here is someone who it happened to in Cleveland: http://www.ideastream.org/news/be-well-why-do-babies-die-in-... . Note, not on drugs, not high, not drunk, doing the "right things." Had researched co-sleeping safely etc... I head her talk on the radio about it. The cause of death was determined to be her breathing on her child's face while they were both asleep. This just isn't the kind of risk I would be willing to take.
Life is never a zero-risk game, and you need to put things in perspective with numbers, not scare stories. You do this every day when you choose to hop on a bike, get in your car or on a train and go to to work.
Parenting is personal, very personal, so do what you feel is right for yourself and your child.
Yes, infant deaths are horrific, no matter the cause(s), and make for emotionally compelling reports.
Do you have numbers on infants who die while in a crib in the same room? Another room? Bedside bassinet?
My current wife, myself and my ex all had agreed that we prefer to be more responsive to our children. My wives both are light sleepers, and woke to the slightest disturbance to check, but went right off to sleep at the all clear. I also developed this sense. A cough, a wheeze, and somehow my brain triggered me to pay attention, but not routine noises.
I never fall out of bed, never have, and neither do the majority of the population. NOTE: I prefer a mattress on the floor anyway, so even if I did, it is 7 inches to the ground. We are aware of our surroundings when we sleep. The babies have always slept between us.
Of course there are exceptions: Drugs, alcohol, people with sleep disorders like 'night terrors', hybermobile sleepers, PTSD-affected people and so on. Again, reason and education.
I will look into the 'breathing onto the face of the baby' bit, since being a technical diver, CPROX-certified and aware of related things, I would think you would have to have your exhaling nose or mouth right up against your baby rather than at breast height where they normally sleep. Ambient air usually is around 21% O2. It would take a high concentration of CO2 to displace the ambient air and to develop right at the nose or mouth, and babies tend to breath twice as fast as parents, so it doesn't seem to add up. I'd like to find numbers on that one.
Again, in the US I kept an old drafty house with lots of air exchange by default, not the typical modern American construction which tends to seal and caulk everything and keep closed doors. This keeps harmful off-gassing products trapped in your breathing space. I also didn't use much energy, since I prefer it a bit chilly vs. toasty, so the drafts and fresh air were welcomed.
It's the reason Radon remediation saw people adding active ducts to remove it from basements and such. Too tightly sealed, no air circulation. Radon is naturally occurring, and it is only when you trap the radon progeny that attach to surfaces or dust that it becomes a respiratory/radiation health concern.
For the past year, I have been living in a house in East Java, where I can see daylight through the roof tiles, and the room is very airy due to the night breeze. We sleep on a mattress on a floor, and the rice fields and trees are all around us with a volcano 13 miles due SSW (Now, that could be a risk!).
[UPDATE] Here's an interesting take from a pediatrician for 35 years, who co-slept with all 8 of his children, and wrote 2 books on the subject regarding Sids[1].
Obesity is also a barrier to co-sleeping, and usually carries other issues like sleep apnea. The US doesn't practice co-sleeping anywhere near the numbers in Asia, and I think the obesity problem is well-known.
1. You can suffocate the baby by breathing on their face while you are asleep. The baby will not cry and will not wake while this is occurring.
2. You can crush your baby by rolling on to them while you are asleep.
3. Your baby can suffocate from their nose and mouth being covered by a blanket or pillow or even the soft mattress if they are get rolled over.
These very sad infant deaths happen frequently even in the US where co-sleeping is not as common as elsewhere in the world. Here are some recent news articles: http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2016/04/co-sleeping_dea... , http://woodtv.com/2015/06/05/mom-hopes-babys-co-sleeping-dea...
Co-sleeping advocates will tell you "as long as you do it safely you can sleep with your newborn." This is false. There is no safe way to sleep with a newborn. Newborns cannot turn their heads away if you breath on them. They cannot move if you get too close. While, many parents sleep with their babies and the babies do not die that does not mean that it is safe.
Update: The mayo-clinics prevention guide for SIDS: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-infant-... . TLDR; Newborn babies should sleep by themselves on their back in a crib with no stuffed animals, pillows, or "crib pads."
Another note: http://thescientificparent.org/crib-notes-is-cosleeping-real...