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I want to be that mother who can stand up and say I am a strong confident mother and I know what is best for my children. We breastfeed and co sleep, We listen, We include, We eat chocolate and snot smoothies, we trampoline and grow frogs, we sling, we carry and we try and understand and work with our children without resorting to punishments, threats or coercion.

Friday 11 November 2011

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.


  



6 comments:

  1. Who is Tasha Wiebusch and which statistics, exactly, is she talking about?

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  2. great post, VERY informative, I had no idea ALL of the Milwaukee cosleeping deaths involved formula fed babies. I really wish they would come up with positive, educational ads instead of shock value scare tactics!

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  3. I love McKenna's advice/research - I wish he'd been consulted for Milwaukee's campaign!

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  4. Disgusting scare tactics and soo misleading!! It's so infuriating!! Thanks for bringing this campaign to the light!

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  5. it's just all so offensive! i'd not seen the fox report- or the commercial from indiana (which oh. my. gosh. you're kidding right? so completely unrealistic. anyways) i still don't quite know what to think about the breastfeeding statistics. you know? i'd be curious if there are further, more exact statistics - birth order of the baby, if the others had been breastfed, etc.
    thanks for sharing the link and i completely agree with you!

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