Infant sleep: Babies sleeping in different rooms to their mothers have double the risk of dying from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) than babies sharing the same room as their mothers, according to an American expert on mother and baby sleeping habits.
"Three major epidemiological studies have shown that when a committed caregiver, usually the mother, sleeps in the same room but not in the same bed as their infant, the chance of the infant dying from SIDS is reduced by 50 per cent," said Dr James McKenna, anthropologist and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioural Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.
Dr McKenna added that the social and biological connection between an infant and its carer is critical if co-sleeping is to be protective, and refutes a dominant medical view that co-sleeping per se is dangerous.
According to Dr McKenna, multiple independent risk factors converge with SIDS deaths.
"High bed-sharing associated with high breastfeeding rates have been associated with relatively low SIDS amongst non-smoking mothers in Japan, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand," wrote Dr McKenna in a review paper, "Bed-sharing and Breastfeeding" (Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, 2005).
"The difficulty is that there is a continuum of co-sleeping from those with positive, protective outcomes to those where babies are put at risk due to maternal smoking and unsafe bed conditions," he added. Heavy alcohol and/or drug use have also been associated with infant death.
Dr McKenna says the medical community cannot promote co-sleeping because of the risk factors in specific high-risk populations. Risk factors associated with bed-sharing in impoverished, high-risk populations are maternal smoking, infants placed to sleep on pillows or under duvets, with other children and co-sleeping with infants on sofas, waterbeds or couches.
Medical opinion aside, mother and baby bed-sharing is becoming more popular, particularly among breastfeeding mothers.
According to Dr McKenna, Ireland is the only western country which does not recommend room-sharing [in their own homes] for mothers and babies. "Even in the United States, there are radical recommendations that babies should sleep next to their mothers on a different surface," he said.
Research into mother and baby arousal patterns found that mothers aroused [from their sleep] 30 per cent more frequently when they co-sleep with their babies. The mother's waking up was linked to the baby's waking up 66 per cent of the time.
Dr McKenna suggested these physiological arousal patterns can increase the mother's sensitivity to a potential life-threatening event for the baby.
Research has also found that when babies wake more frequently, they spend less time in deep sleep.
"They are more alert. Physiologically, they oxygenate their bodies when their heart rates increase, which teaches the baby to respond to events in their own sleep cycle," he said.
Dr McKenna was addressing the La Leche league annual conference in Bundoran, Co Donegal, at the weekend.
