Emotive Co-Sleeping Campaign

Milwaukee currently has a campaign to deter co-sleeping

Are you as appalled by these clearly emotive pictures and the completely one sided information with NO mention to ANY safe co-sleeping studies or practices?

Not only does it include couch sleeping and other surfaces in their statistics  which are NOT safe co-sleeping places.  There is NO mention to the fact, as has been pointed out by mental health worker Tasha Wiebusch, that "the statistics for SIDs and co-sleeping include a child who is sleeping with intoxicated parents, over tired parents, and, get this, if the child was in the parents bed at anytime during the night whether or not they died in the parents bed or in their crib is counted as SIDs while sleeping with their parents. They also count children who die sleeping on the couch or a chair with parents."

There are plenty of articles out there to promote and ensure that co-sleeping is done as safely as possible, that it is in fact a biological imperative and there are even statistics out there to show that through sleeping next to your child, incidences of raised temperatures can be detected and reduced (A baby's temperature is most stable on his mother - in skin-to-skin care mother's chest automatically warms to warm a cold baby, while her core temperature drops if baby is too warm and needs to be cooled  and mothers skin to skin contact can save lives, sleep apnoea can be deterred and detected sooner by the mothers own breathing regulating the child's, thus saving more lives.

Jim McKenna is one of the nation's leading academic experts on bed sharing. McKenna agrees bed sharing has its dangers. But his research shows there is one thing in particular separating the safe bed sharing parents from the rest. 100 percent of the cases in Milwaukee County -- all the babies were formula fed. McKenna predicted that, saying his research shows breastfeeding vitally affects both sleep patterns and sleep position. Dr. McKenna is so convinced breastfeeding is the key to safe bed sharing, he would never recommend a parent bed share without it.


I find this campaign to be unscrupulous in using fear scaremongering tactics and as a co-sleeping mother to two, nearly three toddlers, I find it disgusting, biased and shameful.