Category Archives: Breastfeeding

When my baby hit his three week growth spurt I felt pretty desperate. He fed constantly and barely slept, which meant I didn’t get any sleep either. I phoned the NCT breastfeeding helpline, which I can’t recommend highly enough, and the lovely counsellor talked me through feeding while lying in bed. This was a godsend in itself, but she also convinced me that my baby would be perfectly safe if we co-slept, as long as I took some sensible precautions. Co-sleeping seems to be one area where official advice (“don’t do it“, from my midwife and health visitor) contradicts both common practice (according to the NCT, around half of UK mothers co-sleep at some time) and evidence, which suggests that a number of factors influence the link between co-sleeping and cot death. The NHS have provided a useful summary of a recent study into factors associated with cot death. Here’s the important bit: “This study found significant associations with some factors, most notably co-sleeping with a parent. A large proportion of this co-sleeping risk was attributed to sleeping with a parent on a sofa, or the parent’s prior use of alcohol or drugs. The study does not provide a separate estimate of the risk of SIDS while sharing a bed with a parent in the absence of these and other risk factors”. How frustrating! That’s exactly the statistic I’m interested in – given that cot death is now mercifully rare (0.049% in this study), I wonder what the risk of cot death is when non-smoking, non-drinking, careful mums co-sleep in a bed. Critically, is it safer to plan to co-sleep than to accidentally fall asleep holding your baby? Since most mums become so desperate that they co-sleep eventually, wouldn’t it make more sense if the emphasis was on explaining how to do it safely, rather than trying to prevent it altogether? Learning to co-sleep safely is my top tip for breastfeeding mums, it’ll save your sanity.