The nurse warned her not to do it. So did her friend. But the tired Bronx mom just wanted to silence her wailing infant when she placed him in bed beside her for the night.
The decision proved deadly.
The 180-pound woman woke to find her 2-month-old son with no pulse, the fifth of 27 babies to die from rollover last year – a stunning 350% hike in four years, state records show.
Despite a push to alert parents to the dangers of bed-sharing with newborns, the number of babies dying from the practice has steadily increased since 2005.
“The choice to take an infant into a parent’s bed turns out to be behavior that is very hard to change,” warns Jan Flory, deputy commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services. “It is not illegal – but it’s not safe.”
City health and child welfare officials launched a massive public awareness campaign against bed-sharing in 2005 after such deaths began to rise because of a change in reporting.
The medical examiner had ruled these deaths as undetermined, but began adding bed-sharing as a contributing cause.
The city has paid millions in advertising to promote its message, given away 2,000 cribs to low-income families and taught 12,000 parents proper crib use – and hospitals discourage bed-sharing in newborn care lessons.
“There is still the belief that this is not going to happen to me,” said Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services.
State fatality reports obtained through the public advocate show neglect, parent ignorance, obesity and alcohol played a part in bed-sharing deaths.
Lack of access to a crib did not. In all but one case, the family had a bassinet or crib nearby.
Nationwide, the number of babies who died from accidental suffocation – often by a parent rolling over them in bed – skyrocketed nearly 400% since 1984, hitting 513 in 2004.
The trend coincides with a rise in bed-sharing, a popular way to help moms breast-feed and bond, experts say.
“It’s perfectly acceptable to have the baby close by,” said Lorraine Boyd, the agency’s director for the Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health.
“Because we don’t know all the risk factors that lead to suffocation, it’s hard for us to support people in doing bed-sharing.”
That isn’t co-sleeping — the parents are sleeping very SEPARATELY from the baby.
A baby sleeping in the snugglenest has absolutely no human contact, which defeats the purpose of co-sleeping.
hi where can you buy this bassinet let people know thank you
http://www.snugglenest.com/
A normal even exhausted healthy mother no matter what senses her baby next to her and would not rollover their child.I slept with six of my children for over 9 months and woke at every sound and was consistently their to comfort them. They are all emotionaly and physically healthy and the benefits outweigh the risks in many different ways.
under normal circumstances a mother does not roll over and smother her baby. i do not know what the missing variable is in this story – but something is missing. Jewish mothers sleeping with a nursing baby beside her is not dangerous.
There is a little non-slip bassinet that you can buy , it sits on your bed besides you.This way your baby is right near you, but you can’t roll over onto the baby.
the spike is directly related to substance abuse, but it’s not “PC” to release THOSE stats.
You must be a bonafide chassidic scientist and the studies are only about people who don’t have emunah.
I kept my children next to me for the first few months- much safer than in the same bed. Both Mom and baby sleep better and safer
do these studies take into account drug and alcohol use by the mother. Look the facts and the demographics of where this is happening. These kind of studies do not show the full research.
Either it’s this or it’s SIDS.
Just try and be cautious and put your trust in Hashem.
I had all my children in bed and B”H it worked out