The doctors will also admit they have no idea what causes it. That means just be good to your kid and dont worry more than standard one (food, sleep, poop.)
With our three kids, the first slept separately, and the last two co-slept. Never had any problems with the last two (although the middle one developed a habit of helicoptering while breast feeding and kicking me in the face). We didn't go nuts with pillows or heavy blankets, and had a little mesh barrier to keep the sprog from rolling over the side of the bed, but that was all it took. It was a lot easier for mom all around and she and the kids slept a lot better, even if the aforementioned nocturnal habits of the kids saw me sleeping on the couch periodically.
I do recall looking into the history and research on it at the time and finding that the recommendations to sleep apart stemmed from shortly after the introduction of cheap gin to Victorian lower classes. The author suggested based on reports at the time that the increase in people accidentally smothering their kids while sleeping was due to people getting near black out drunk before bed and thus not noticing when they rolled over on the child. That seems plausible to me, as I have noticed I won't roll over on things at night; even if I fall asleep with my Kindle or physical books next to me I notice enough to never wake up on top of it or on the other side. Likewise when my daughters leave dolls in the bed. I might just be a light sleeper, but my wife is the same way it seems.
On the literature review: if you look really hard and don't find an effect, there is no effect. Absence of evidence etc. It should be obvious that bed-sharing with an infant is dangerous when parents are drugged out of their mind, drunk, or so obese they hardly know where their body ends and where their child starts. If that's not descriptive of your situation, you are within the evolutionary norm, and don't have to worry.
On the anectodal side: All of our children slept in our bed until weaned. It has exactly the upsides you describe. On the risks, I can say with absolute confidence that you will know if you eg. roll on your child in your sleep. A child doesn't like being rolled upon and will let his disapproval be known.
This includes a report of how Japan greatly reduced infant deaths due to vaccination by delaying the pertussis vaccination age from 3 months to 2 years.
Please ensure you, Mom and your child have sufficient 25-hydroxyvitamin D (50 ng/mL = 125 nmol/L = 1 part in 20,000,000) to run their immune systems properly. This affects neurodevelopment and pretty much every aspect of health. Many doctors are not aware of this and are happy with 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L), which is sufficient for the kidneys to play their role in regulating calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism.
If Babe is substantially breast fed and Mom is 25-hydroxyvitamin D replete, all will be well since her breast milk will contain a significant quantity of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, as well as vitamin D3 itself. Ingested 25-hydroxyvitamin D goes straight into circulation. Vitamin D3 is somewhat more difficult to absorb and must be hydroxylated, primarily in the liver, to become circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, with only about 1/4 of the ingested vitamin D3 being converted in this way.
Newborns' 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels depend directly on their moms'. Measurements of vitamin D3 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels vary widely, in part due to the difficulties in measuring such low levels: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/ fnut.2023.1229445. One recent study https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/2/573 found approximately equal amounts of vitamin D3 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D in human breast milk. Since (at least in adults) the liver only coverts about 1/4 of ingested vitamin D3 into circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, this means that the bulk of the benefit to the breast-fed child's 25-hydroxyvitamin D comes from the 25-hydroxyvitamin D component of breast milk. This depends on the mother's 25-hydroxyvitamin D level.
I think there is a pretty big lack of acknowledgment of the trade offs to NOT cosleeping. Extreme parental sleep deprivation also has devastating consequences. Less successful breastfeeding is also well documented. Interestingly, the articles you shared don't seem to consider whether the infant was breastfed or formula fed. I think it represents an assumption of the bottle feeding norm and it may be true that separate infant sleep is safer for bottle fed babies.
Cosleeping is ubiquitous in Japan, and yet (last I checked) they had lower rates of SIDS. If course, it all depends on how different countries or different doctors categorize these deaths.
In Indonesia mothers and babies always share the same bed and no doctor warns against it IRL. Nothing ever happens, and nothing can happen unless you're retarded.
more than 1,200 of scientific references – all from mainstream scientific papers and textbooks, the official publications of relevant government agencies, or manufacturers’ documents.
The American CDC has known for years that SIDS is highly correlated with recent vaccination of the baby...85% or more...and in America, very few parents sleep with the baby, it's unheard of in our circle...The tradition is that the baby has its own crib or bassinet of some kind, and often a parent doesn't even sleep in the same room...Despite these facts, vaccination has expanded exponentially in the last 60 years, and so has SIDS...
Granted that the risk of SIDS is minuscule. So the following is just offered for what it’s worth, as regards SIDS and infant health in general.
Another possible factor in SIDS is *ambient* temperature, a factor distinct from tog value (the thermal insulating qualities of clothing and bedding). This may especially be a factor during sleep. Have any studies addressed this?
The most relevant points from the BBC article: “According to The Lullaby Trust in the UK, the recommended room temperature for babies is slightly lower than average, at 16-20C (60-68F). If babies overheat, there is a risk of sudden infant death syndrome.” “The average body temperature of a newborn or a young child is slightly higher than an older child or adult, usually between 36.5 and 37.5C (97.7F and 99.5F). This is because their metabolism is more active, and their body surface area is larger in relation to their body weight. As their bodies grapple with thermoregulation, it takes longer for them to sweat, so their bodies hold more heat.”
In short, many parents may be overdressing babies, especially for sleep. (Or at any rate, at night, when the *parents* are trying to sleep, and put the baby to bed.) And the problem may be compounded by overdressing the babies even when the ambient temperature is excessive due to climate or to overheated buildings. (In much of the United States, at least, multifamily housing tends to be heated consistently above recommended temperature ranges in the winter, and a stifling summer climate has always been the norm.) And women, who need warmer ambient temperatures than men, may assume that their babies need even more warmth than they themselves do.
(For what it’s worth, the article also seems to bear out my own experience that the best formula for sleep is a cool room and warm blankets--pajamas not needed and probably counterproductive, at least for adults.)
Shoot. I've looked into this when our first was small, due to essentially the same reasons as you did. My conclusion was that it's virtually a non-concern for kids without serious pre-existing conditions (usually related to heart, lung or neurological development), but different sleeping positions, smaller bedding, no bedsharing does genuinely, significantly reduce death for those. So not acausal correlation.
I had found a nice paper that looked in-detail into a number of cases and claimed to have found that only a vanishingly small number of kids had no pre-existing condition. I'll see whether I can find it again. The best I can find at the moment is this paper: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61662-6/fulltext?pubType=related. "Infants who had been studied and subsequently died from SIDS, compared with surviving infants, had higher baseline [lots of negative]" It also includes the rather interesting reasoning that, essentially, babies in the prone position sleep deeper & better, which is bad, since SIDS happens due to not waking up in a situation when their breathing is restricted. Logically consistent, but not very compelling unless you consider the risk already significant.
If due to the definition of SIDS (almost) only kids with pre-exisiting conditions can even die in this way, and these measures reduce the death rate substantially, then you will get a statistical relationship no matter what you control for, and for good reasons. It also explains the relationship with parental drinking, low socioeconomic status etc. - obviously those are associated with insufficient development. But it would still be almost irrelevant for broadly healthy babies.
It's from 1994, but it's pretty explicit, quoting:
"Neuropathologic studies in SIDS victims support the concept that they are not entirely ‘normal’ prior to death, but rather possess underlying vulnerabilities which put them at risk for sudden death. This concept forms a key link in a triple-risk model for the pathogenesis of SIDS proposed by us. According to this model, sudden death in SIDS results from the intersection of three overlapping factors: (1) a vulnerable infant; (2) a critical developmental period in homeostatic control, and (3) an exogenous stressor(s). An infant will die of SIDS only if he/she possesses all three factors"
You can find other, more recent paper on the triple risk model, but the basic implications stay the same. So, if your baby is clearly very healthy, as ours have always been, it's a complete non-concern.
In NZ I recall rates of SIDS dropping dramatically (in the 1990's) after a publicity campaign to have babies sleep on their backs. LLM reports "a striking halving of the SIDS mortality rate in just two years"
My wife had our babies sleep in a bassinet adjacent to our bed with mother and baby being at the same height for ease of transfer for breast feeding. This was how her mother had cared for her babies and my wife never considered an alternative.
We have been cosleeping with a baby for 1½ years now and at no point did it look dangerous. Wife is a bit on the neurotic side and on no meds or obese, and woke up easily if baby was moving or wanted to feed. Baby started sleeping on top of the mother with head tilted slightly downwards and later transitioned to sleep between us, most of the time sleeping on his back or or belly with head sideways. I kept a diary on his developement and there just wasn´t any close call with bad sleeping position that could endanger his airways or anything like that. The dangerous part was when he started crawling and could fall off the bed.
When studies find a correlation but I can´t think of any mechanism that would cause that correlation I tend to think it has sth to do with "modernity" rather than the specific act of parenting they claim to study.
It is silly, from a risk perspective.
A good dig here.
The doctors will also admit they have no idea what causes it. That means just be good to your kid and dont worry more than standard one (food, sleep, poop.)
Good call.
It's worth it if your fiancee gets more *sleep*.
Trust me on this.
With our three kids, the first slept separately, and the last two co-slept. Never had any problems with the last two (although the middle one developed a habit of helicoptering while breast feeding and kicking me in the face). We didn't go nuts with pillows or heavy blankets, and had a little mesh barrier to keep the sprog from rolling over the side of the bed, but that was all it took. It was a lot easier for mom all around and she and the kids slept a lot better, even if the aforementioned nocturnal habits of the kids saw me sleeping on the couch periodically.
I do recall looking into the history and research on it at the time and finding that the recommendations to sleep apart stemmed from shortly after the introduction of cheap gin to Victorian lower classes. The author suggested based on reports at the time that the increase in people accidentally smothering their kids while sleeping was due to people getting near black out drunk before bed and thus not noticing when they rolled over on the child. That seems plausible to me, as I have noticed I won't roll over on things at night; even if I fall asleep with my Kindle or physical books next to me I notice enough to never wake up on top of it or on the other side. Likewise when my daughters leave dolls in the bed. I might just be a light sleeper, but my wife is the same way it seems.
On the literature review: if you look really hard and don't find an effect, there is no effect. Absence of evidence etc. It should be obvious that bed-sharing with an infant is dangerous when parents are drugged out of their mind, drunk, or so obese they hardly know where their body ends and where their child starts. If that's not descriptive of your situation, you are within the evolutionary norm, and don't have to worry.
On the anectodal side: All of our children slept in our bed until weaned. It has exactly the upsides you describe. On the risks, I can say with absolute confidence that you will know if you eg. roll on your child in your sleep. A child doesn't like being rolled upon and will let his disapproval be known.
Good luck you you and your family!
Dr Pierre Kory argues that SIDS is caused primarily by vaccinations: https://pierrekorymedicalmusings.com/p/the-suppression-of-vaccine-induced
This includes a report of how Japan greatly reduced infant deaths due to vaccination by delaying the pertussis vaccination age from 3 months to 2 years.
Please ensure you, Mom and your child have sufficient 25-hydroxyvitamin D (50 ng/mL = 125 nmol/L = 1 part in 20,000,000) to run their immune systems properly. This affects neurodevelopment and pretty much every aspect of health. Many doctors are not aware of this and are happy with 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L), which is sufficient for the kidneys to play their role in regulating calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism.
If Babe is substantially breast fed and Mom is 25-hydroxyvitamin D replete, all will be well since her breast milk will contain a significant quantity of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, as well as vitamin D3 itself. Ingested 25-hydroxyvitamin D goes straight into circulation. Vitamin D3 is somewhat more difficult to absorb and must be hydroxylated, primarily in the liver, to become circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, with only about 1/4 of the ingested vitamin D3 being converted in this way.
Please see the research cited and discussed at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/. This doesn't mention breastfeeding.
Newborns' 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels depend directly on their moms'. Measurements of vitamin D3 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels vary widely, in part due to the difficulties in measuring such low levels: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/ fnut.2023.1229445. One recent study https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/2/573 found approximately equal amounts of vitamin D3 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D in human breast milk. Since (at least in adults) the liver only coverts about 1/4 of ingested vitamin D3 into circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, this means that the bulk of the benefit to the breast-fed child's 25-hydroxyvitamin D comes from the 25-hydroxyvitamin D component of breast milk. This depends on the mother's 25-hydroxyvitamin D level.
Elephant in the room here. SIDS is basically 100% explained by vaccination and infanticide.
Thanks for the very thorough review of the evidence. I wrote about this topic from the perspective of an anthro student, nurse, midwife and mom and came to very similar conclusions. https://open.substack.com/pub/annledbetter/p/co-sleeping-on-infant-sleep-and-safety?r=8c5pl&utm_medium=ios
I think there is a pretty big lack of acknowledgment of the trade offs to NOT cosleeping. Extreme parental sleep deprivation also has devastating consequences. Less successful breastfeeding is also well documented. Interestingly, the articles you shared don't seem to consider whether the infant was breastfed or formula fed. I think it represents an assumption of the bottle feeding norm and it may be true that separate infant sleep is safer for bottle fed babies.
Cosleeping is ubiquitous in Japan, and yet (last I checked) they had lower rates of SIDS. If course, it all depends on how different countries or different doctors categorize these deaths.
In Indonesia mothers and babies always share the same bed and no doctor warns against it IRL. Nothing ever happens, and nothing can happen unless you're retarded.
In a not totally unrelated issue, you should definitely check the science behind childhood vaccination.
Here is the best book to start this journey in my opinion : https://www.amazon.com/Turtles-All-Way-Down-Vaccine/dp/9655981045
more than 1,200 of scientific references – all from mainstream scientific papers and textbooks, the official publications of relevant government agencies, or manufacturers’ documents.
Methinks that’s a bridge too far for our beloved zogbrained “dissident scientist”.
The American CDC has known for years that SIDS is highly correlated with recent vaccination of the baby...85% or more...and in America, very few parents sleep with the baby, it's unheard of in our circle...The tradition is that the baby has its own crib or bassinet of some kind, and often a parent doesn't even sleep in the same room...Despite these facts, vaccination has expanded exponentially in the last 60 years, and so has SIDS...
Granted that the risk of SIDS is minuscule. So the following is just offered for what it’s worth, as regards SIDS and infant health in general.
Another possible factor in SIDS is *ambient* temperature, a factor distinct from tog value (the thermal insulating qualities of clothing and bedding). This may especially be a factor during sleep. Have any studies addressed this?
I don’t read the scientific literature on the subject, but a recent BBC article gives some data, and suggests some sources, and perhaps directions for research, on the question of ambient temperature and health in general, with some mention of SIDS. (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250228-battle-of-the-thermostat-the-science-behind-your-central-heating-arguments, 3 March 2025, by Molly Gorman.)
The most relevant points from the BBC article: “According to The Lullaby Trust in the UK, the recommended room temperature for babies is slightly lower than average, at 16-20C (60-68F). If babies overheat, there is a risk of sudden infant death syndrome.” “The average body temperature of a newborn or a young child is slightly higher than an older child or adult, usually between 36.5 and 37.5C (97.7F and 99.5F). This is because their metabolism is more active, and their body surface area is larger in relation to their body weight. As their bodies grapple with thermoregulation, it takes longer for them to sweat, so their bodies hold more heat.”
In short, many parents may be overdressing babies, especially for sleep. (Or at any rate, at night, when the *parents* are trying to sleep, and put the baby to bed.) And the problem may be compounded by overdressing the babies even when the ambient temperature is excessive due to climate or to overheated buildings. (In much of the United States, at least, multifamily housing tends to be heated consistently above recommended temperature ranges in the winter, and a stifling summer climate has always been the norm.) And women, who need warmer ambient temperatures than men, may assume that their babies need even more warmth than they themselves do.
(For what it’s worth, the article also seems to bear out my own experience that the best formula for sleep is a cool room and warm blankets--pajamas not needed and probably counterproductive, at least for adults.)
Great content. I love this line; it's so refreshing: "I honestly don't know if bedsharing causes SIDS or not, and neither does anyone else."
Shoot. I've looked into this when our first was small, due to essentially the same reasons as you did. My conclusion was that it's virtually a non-concern for kids without serious pre-existing conditions (usually related to heart, lung or neurological development), but different sleeping positions, smaller bedding, no bedsharing does genuinely, significantly reduce death for those. So not acausal correlation.
I had found a nice paper that looked in-detail into a number of cases and claimed to have found that only a vanishingly small number of kids had no pre-existing condition. I'll see whether I can find it again. The best I can find at the moment is this paper: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61662-6/fulltext?pubType=related. "Infants who had been studied and subsequently died from SIDS, compared with surviving infants, had higher baseline [lots of negative]" It also includes the rather interesting reasoning that, essentially, babies in the prone position sleep deeper & better, which is bad, since SIDS happens due to not waking up in a situation when their breathing is restricted. Logically consistent, but not very compelling unless you consider the risk already significant.
If due to the definition of SIDS (almost) only kids with pre-exisiting conditions can even die in this way, and these measures reduce the death rate substantially, then you will get a statistical relationship no matter what you control for, and for good reasons. It also explains the relationship with parental drinking, low socioeconomic status etc. - obviously those are associated with insufficient development. But it would still be almost irrelevant for broadly healthy babies.
Edit: Found the original paper! https://karger.com/neo/article-abstract/65/3-4/194/368414/A-Perspective-on-Neuropathologic-Findings-in
It's from 1994, but it's pretty explicit, quoting:
"Neuropathologic studies in SIDS victims support the concept that they are not entirely ‘normal’ prior to death, but rather possess underlying vulnerabilities which put them at risk for sudden death. This concept forms a key link in a triple-risk model for the pathogenesis of SIDS proposed by us. According to this model, sudden death in SIDS results from the intersection of three overlapping factors: (1) a vulnerable infant; (2) a critical developmental period in homeostatic control, and (3) an exogenous stressor(s). An infant will die of SIDS only if he/she possesses all three factors"
You can find other, more recent paper on the triple risk model, but the basic implications stay the same. So, if your baby is clearly very healthy, as ours have always been, it's a complete non-concern.
In NZ I recall rates of SIDS dropping dramatically (in the 1990's) after a publicity campaign to have babies sleep on their backs. LLM reports "a striking halving of the SIDS mortality rate in just two years"
My wife had our babies sleep in a bassinet adjacent to our bed with mother and baby being at the same height for ease of transfer for breast feeding. This was how her mother had cared for her babies and my wife never considered an alternative.
We have been cosleeping with a baby for 1½ years now and at no point did it look dangerous. Wife is a bit on the neurotic side and on no meds or obese, and woke up easily if baby was moving or wanted to feed. Baby started sleeping on top of the mother with head tilted slightly downwards and later transitioned to sleep between us, most of the time sleeping on his back or or belly with head sideways. I kept a diary on his developement and there just wasn´t any close call with bad sleeping position that could endanger his airways or anything like that. The dangerous part was when he started crawling and could fall off the bed.
When studies find a correlation but I can´t think of any mechanism that would cause that correlation I tend to think it has sth to do with "modernity" rather than the specific act of parenting they claim to study.
Highest cause of so called SIDS are childhood Vax