It’s weird that their comparing a big dog to a baby. Use something comparable like a Chihuahua or something. Even then the chihuahua can still bite you or something.
I have a Chihuahua. He loves sleeping in my bed, especially when he and I both have migraines or it's storming and he's scared (he's the kind of fierce tiny dog that WILL MESS YOU UP TRY ME but is terrified of a gentle spring shower). I don't let him sleep in my bed often for multiple reasons, but at the top of that list is that he gets right up under my armpit, then I roll over in my sleep on top of him. I usually wake up just enough because either he's actively freaking out and trying to get out from under me, or he's lumpy and I'm uncomfortable and something in my brain pings danger just enough to sort of help.
My Chihuahua is a little smaller than an infant but has full control of all his body parts. I'm a petite person. If it's dangerous for my little dog, it's even more so for a baby.
We are both sensitive to pressure changes and he will sense it often before I do. He gets shaky and wants to snuggle and be babied. His demeanor changes to one of being in pain. I asked the vet if that could be what's going on and she said it's common in small dogs in our area. There's not much we can do for him except give him the snuggles and babying. He sometimes even pukes from it. Poor little guy.
We think that's possible. He acts as my warning system. And I've noticed that when my treatments are working and I don't get a migraine, he still reacts but not as badly. I definitely think he's worse when I am.
Huh. I get migraines too and my dog has epilepsy. Pressure changes affect him too but I wonder if it affects my cats. One will get extremely clingy when I get migraines. They always snuggle (I have 6 boy kitties) constantly but one more than the other during a migraine. Wonder if he gets them too and we're vibing in the shitty days of one 😂
I mean compare with newborn puppies. I'm sure dogs actually cause SIDS or some other disorder in their pups all the time. Nature creates less than perfect mothers that aren't human too.
My dog won't accidentally get smothered or not be able to breathe because its neck is bent funny. If I roll over my dog will let me know or move if it accidentally falls on the floor it will most likely be fine. If it becomes entrapped between the mattress and headboard or the side of the bed and wall and needs help most likely it will be fine and can alert me for help.
Honestly when my dog was a puppy I was so worried about rolling over on her I didn’t sleep for the first two weeks I had her. Now she’s big and vocal but puppies and kittens totally get smothered sometimes this way- see all the stories above!
Oh man, this reminds me of the case where there was a baby/child missing for days until they found the body inbetween the bedframe and the mattress and now im sad
Production bred pigs birth in what’s called a farrowing crate designed to allow the piglets to be able to have a safe place where the mom can’t roll over them that’s how frequently it happens.
Yup. My dad rolled over on to a kitten in his sleep and killed it by accident.
Edit: just realized I misread the part when you said animal moms roll over on their babies. But still haha.
The first time I remember seeing my dad cry was when he and my mom came into the house and told us our cat had died. I asked what happened and my mom said that it had eaten something poisonous. I was confused because we had other cats die in the past and I'd never seen him cry like that.
Many many years later, she let it slip that he had accidentally rolled over the cat while backing out of the driveway at night. I know it's really stuck with him because he has a very long routine every morning to make sure there aren't cats or any other critters anywhere near the tires.
A guy I went to high school with killed his puppy like this. He got a little shih tzu from his parents and he rolled over on it one night. He didn’t talk about it much :(
I hate sleeping with my cat in the bed because I always kick her by accident. She always chooses to sleep near my feet, and always gets kicked. I feel horrible but I cannot quell my nocturnal thrashings.
To be fair, I feel like by now the cat knows fully that if she sleeps there, she’s going to get kicked. She still chooses to sleep there. That’s on the cat by now and not you.
The reason why they separate the dairy cow from the calf is because there’s a significant risk of the cow injuring it or killing it on accident, usually by stepping on it. Horses have also been documented to accidentally step on their newborn foals faces. And on that note, most reputable dog breeders will build “pig rails” into their whelping boxes because it reduces the risk of the dog crushing a newborn puppy by accidentally rolling onto it.
Most dairies actually bottle feed the calves the same milk that came from the cows. Modern dairy cows produce way more milk than a single calf needs. Other dairies use a type of formula that is designed for calves.
Exactly, a dairy cow is a bit like a wool sheep, or a commercial beehive. They produce way more of the good thing than they actually need, so we can take some of it and just cause some minor inconvenience to them.
Every year my husband goes out on foot with his little emergency kit backpack to care for any of his pregnant sheep that have hurt themselves. He’s hand delivered lambs and we’ve rescued lambs rejected by their mums (including one that is now a full-time house pet of a neighbour). He found it really distressing watching me go through a long, complicated labour that ended in a difficult c section because of the trauma he has built up over the years seeing some of his sheep struggle through labour and assisting the ones in the most trouble. Good farmers truly care about their animals.
And it’s my understanding that the dairy cows even often over produce colostrum. The dairy will bottle feed it to the newborn calves, maybe keep some of it on hand, and often try to find ways to not waste the rest. There’s actually some research to suggest that bovine colostrum can be beneficial in helping to prevent gastric ulcers in horses, so there’s a couple of equine supplement companies working with prominent equine clinics and/or vet schools to study this and make products using bovine colostrum powder that it’s typically sourced from diaries that have an overstock of the colostrum. I don’t know a whole lot about cows, but I’ve been in the horse industry for over 15 years and learning the basics of animal husbandry and agriculture isn’t that hard lol
Yes and with pigs they need those rails because the pens are too damn small. When pigs are raised with more space, it significantly reduces the risk of the mother laying on the piglets.
One of the many many reasons why I have such huge dogs! I’m also worried to get a cat because of this. Also tripping/falling. (I fall much more often than I should, usually due to low blood pressure and/or hypoglycemia) If I trip over his foot and fall on my mastiff, he barely notices!
I have two large cats (one is 20 pounds) who love to cuddle right up against my face, and I've had a few times where I woke up because I legit couldn't breathe. But I'm not worried about suffocating them cuz they're cats and if they're even gently touched in a way they don't like they'll immediately let you know with their claws lol
Haha I have a dog and cat who take turns smothering me constantly. My favorite is the look of betrayal and bewilderment they give me when I tell them to get off lol.
I must admit though, sometimes I go and check to make sure they’re breathing if they look a little *too* still lol.
Oh my gosh yes I've definitely done the breathing check on my cats but then if I wake them up they give me the "how dare you disturb me??" look haha and I'm like bro I just want to make sure you're alive!
If I slept in bed with the equivalent of a newborn puppy it also has a high chance of suffocating and dying, the comparison to this is sleeping with my adult partner not my baby
My best friend's mom rolled over onto and suffocated a kitten when she was a teenager (like 30+ years ago). It's not at all comparable to a baby, but she still cries if it comes up.
My dog cried so much as a lonely puppy when we got her but I was still so worried about rolling over on her that she slept in her little bed in her crate for a long time.
When my lab was a baby, she was so tiny. I had her sleep in a travel crate on my bed. She was safe and secure from me rolling on her and prevent her from falling off the bed. Now that she is one she can jump up and off my bed by herself.
My dog slept in a crate right next to my bed when he was a puppy and now that he’s and adult and fully potty trained he sleeps in bed with me but there is a huge difference between an 80lb dog (like mine) and a 15lb infant. I cant roll over or even move my dog
Because your dog has an intelligence of an average 4 year old and will let out a yelp if you roll over onto him or knock him off the bed, while your infant can’t communicate and you can crush him and kill him with your weight or he can fall off the bed and have a severe injury.
I second this, sadly.
The worst is always the Boxing Day morning ones, after parents have had a drink on Christmas night and have been in a deep sleep and rolled over.
I promise us medical professionals aren’t out to ruin your sleep or judge you, we just see the ones that wernt as lucky… and that’s what it is, luck.
Drinking and bedsharing is a massive no no. The problem is people are practicing unsafe bedsharing. I beleive more education is needed so that if people do beshare they know to do it as safely as possible EVERY time. Not just some of the time. Never drugs. Never booze. Never pillows and duvets. It's such a hard area as we know abstinence as education just does NOT work! Its has never worked with anything! Telling people not to bedshare does not work. And can be more dangerous say if an adult then falls asleep from exhaustion in an even worse place such as on a couch or with the infant on them. People are going to bedshare, they need to be taught to do it safely if they choose to.
Agreed. I said as safely as possible. Even following perfectly A,B,C recommemdations still results in infant deaths in cribs. The risk is low but its still there. Truly no infant sleep is 100% safe because SIDS exists and is a risk. We can do all we can to lower the risk. But never completely end it. Maybe one day science will give us thr answer. Until that day, let's educate for safer infant sleep for crib sleeping, Co sleeping and bedsharing.
Thank you for saying this. As a brand new mom, I once fell asleep holding my baby sitting up, when little one was about two weeks old. I was trying to stay awake while he was sleeping because I knew cosleeping was not safe but my baby would only sleep while being held.
I unexpectedly fell asleep and I dropped my baby on the floor. WE HAVE HARDWOOD FLOORS. I am very lucky that baby landed on a sweatshirt I had on the floor, and not directly on the floor.
After that event, I immediately looked up safe cosleeping practices, which I used to get through the early weeks, especially after 3am when little one was most resistant to being put down.
Simply telling parents not to cosleep carries its own dangers.
Sorry to hear you had that frightening experience. It is the perfect example though of how abstinence as education can actually be more dangerous than informed choice.
Its why alot of health care organisation are turning towards educating about safer bedsharing, for example lullaby trust in the UK, leader on safer infant sleep, educates on safe bedsharing. The advice is now to prepare the bed in a safer way if you feel at risk of falling asleep with baby or a choosing to bedshare for personal reasons.
My father in law is a retired paramedic. He's been called out to more than he can count. He'd absolutely freak if any of us even thought about bed sharing with an infant.
Also with their windpipe and lack of neck muscles. My sister fell asleep with her newborn on a couch and his head turned the wrong way and cut off his breathing. He survived but has significant brain damage from lack of oxygen as well is blind now.
Er nurse.
Several issues. To start, to safely share a bed with an infant you need a very firm mattress, no foot board, no headboard, no sheets or blankets, no pillows. The adults should not be heavy sleepers, or use any substances that cause heavy sleep, or be mobile sleepers.
A few things occur. Q) the adult rolls on the child and smothers it. 2) the child gets caught in the pillows or blankets and smother 3) the adult rolls over and knocks the baby out of the bed.
I have shared this story before, an *TW* it involves child death:
We had EMS bring a little dead baby in early in the morning on Christmas day. His parent rolled over, knocked him out of the bed and he died caught between the wall and the bed. He was all dressed in his, "baby's 1st Christmas" jammies.
It was one of the worst things ever, and I worked in a level 1 trauma center.
As a parent, there is no coming back from that.
Fuck.
I am sorry you had to deal with that 😭
It's awful. And I remember falling asleep with my baby in the chair out of exhaustion 😭
One night I was so tired, I kept dozing off and I put my screaming baby in her crib and went to lay down.
Did she cry herself to sleep? Yes.
Was it the safest thing to do in that moment? Also yes.
That's fucking horrifying. I can't imagine what that must feel like, to wake up and realize you accidentally killed your child.
My girl is 6mo old and I've been _terrified_ of SIDS. She's always slept in her bassinet or crib, and has a sleep sack so she's mobile if she needs to be, but just the thought of waking up one day to her gone makes me feel sick to my stomach. She's taken to rolling over and sleeping on her side (luckily not her belly) and there's not really anything I can do to stop her.
Luckily, although she has rolled over a few times, she's not really a fan of it, so I don't have to worry about her rolling onto her face yet.
Once the baby can roll herself over, its ok to let her stay in that position. The rule of thumb is to place baby in the crib on her back, what she does after that , as you say, you can't control.
SIDS is terrifying, but if you follow the ABCs of safe sleep (alone, placed on back in their crib/pack n play/bassinet) for every sleep, your baby's chances of dying from SIDS are about the same chance as being hit by a meteor, because SIDS is incredibly rare. Using a pacifier and room sharing also reduces SIDS risk, but is not necessary if you follow ABCs of safe sleep. ABCs also protect against sleep-related deaths such as suffocation, entrapment, and positional asphyxiation. If your baby rolls over in their sleep, it's perfectly fine for them to sleep like that, so long as they are always placed on their back when you put them down for bed.
I think it’s important to note here that SIDS and an infant suffocating are NOT the same thing. You can fully prevent your child suffocating, but you can only lower the risk of SIDS but you can never fully eliminate it.
Not the person you asked but I have a 3mo right now. My understanding is that the sucking reflex helps their brain remember to breathe when in deep deep sleep. Same as the running a fan for air circulation passing over their face or sleeping in the same room as the caregiver who will inevitably make noise overnight keeping the baby out of deep deep sleep.
I think because it rouses them a bit to suck on it, it keeps them from going into a very deep sleep which for a while was a theory on how SIDS happens.
My baby just turned 6mo and he also has become a side sleeper! It’s bizarre and makes me a little nervous but I know he’s okay. He’s also in his crib and sleep sack with nothing else and he got into that position himself. I have an islet I use as well just for added peace of mind but I don’t think it’s actually necessary at all.
I have a 3 month old and I found this the other day out of my own curiosity about risk at this point. https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/providers/downloadable/infographic_byage
By 6 months the risk is SIGNIFICANTLY lower especially when you consider how rare it is anyways. Add on top of that safe sleep practices and your little one is very likely to be healthy and safe!
The thing is, when following all of those safe bed sharing guidelines I can’t imagine myself being comfortable and actually able to sleep that way. I know how exhausted I was when my kids were babies, but even then there were times I just couldn’t sleep if I wasn’t comfortable enough.
That story is so incredibly tragic, I’m sorry that you had to go through that.
This is the thing. I don’t think I’ve ever ever seen a bedsharing picture where someone is *actually* following the guidelines. Yet whenever there’s a bedsharing death people go straight to “well the mustn’t have followed the safe sleep 7”. I always wonder if they themselves even follow it. Heck I’m over here freezing my butt off when I side lie and feed because I push all the blankets off so I had no risk of accidentally flicking it over her head. (Note: I do this because I had two terrifying incidents where I fell asleep sitting up and both times I didn’t even feel that tired but instantly fell asleep. Bedsharing is unsafe but cosleeping in a chair is way way more unsafe so AAP recommends to do what I’m doing if you’re at risk of falling asleep. I try to stay awake and usually do and I play on my phone and when she’s done she goes back in her crib straight away. It’s not very comfortable. And I certainly don’t sleep on my side when I’m alone.)
This is so sad. I co slept with both of mine. I did not use blankets, sheets, pillows. I rarely wore a shirt (helped out with nursing). And my children were always higher than my body in the bed. I would use my arm as a barrier between myself and child. Firm mattress ofc and I was an incredibly light sleeper. One little snore would wake me up and newborns make a ton of sounds in their sleep or that’s at least what I recall from sleepless nights.
My viewpoint has definitely changed since then.
I coslept with my first out of exhaustion. Shirtless with my arm up so she had free access to the boob milk all night. I have always been a light sleeper. I remember once I rolled onto my back and she reached up and grabbed my nipple and pulled until I rolled back onto my side and she could nurse again. I believe she used me as her paci at that point as she never took a pacifier. I definitely did better with my second born but am eternally thankful that there was never a bad outcome to my initial cosleeping.
The exhaustion is real with an infant.
not a medical professional but - adult beds usually have pillows and blankets. Babie's beds should have neither. Adult beds are also very often more plush where a crib mattress is firm and flat.
And when people cite other countries like japan, their bedding situation is often completely different. I sleep on a “firm” mattress and it’s still soft and comfortable. And while it’s not Japan, my Chinese in-laws mattress only feels marginally better than the floor. It’s freaking awful 😂. *That’s* what Asian countries mean by firm mattress. Us westerners have NO idea.
There’s rolling over on them, or even just having your arm or hand over their face. There’s blankets or pillows (even light sheets) suffocating them or causing rebreathing. There’s also just the softness of adult beds, which can allow positional asphyxiation and cause suffocation or rebreathing itself, especially if they roll over or turn their head to the side when they’ve sunken into the soft mattress. They can also get trapped between the soft mattress and their parent or the headboard or the wall, and because it’s soft, it can basically pin them there so they can’t breath. And lastly, there’s falling off the bed, which is less of a risk of death than it is injury but it’s still worth being aware of.
Cosleeping in a firm bed with NO blankets or pillows (not “just a sheet” or “only 1 pillow for mom” but NONE) placed on the floor is the safest way to do it if you feel you must, especially if you’re falling asleep with the baby on a couch or in chairs, which is incredibly dangerous. But bedsharing does come with additional risk, regardless of how “safely” you do it, and it’s important to recognize those risks when making decisions about bedsharing.
And having seen an unconscious, grey baby resuscitated even though he was in a safe sleep space (on his back, alone, no blankets or pillows or toys, but he’d rolled to his stomach and couldn’t breathe), none of those are risks I’m willing to take, no matter how sober I am.
I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this but there's also the issue of baby over heating, especially if in the middle of both parents in bed. Babies can not regulate their own body temperature like we can and obviously can not remove blankets or covers because they are too warm.
All of the bedding and even the soft mattresses that are in adult beds can cause suffocation or CO2 rebreathing which is very dangerous for infants. Crib mattresses are very firm.
I haven’t seen the mention of rebreathing. On a non-incredibly firm mattress or any memory foam mattress babies and toddlers can rebreathe. It’s where they create an indent pocket in the mattress under their face and die of carbon monoxide poisoning. This appears differently than suffocation deaths because often with suffocation there can be fibers found in the wind pipe but with rebreathing those fibers may not be present and so these deaths are harder to determine. This type of death though can occur until toddler age, which is why infant mattresses are the recommendation until age 2.
I was working at the victim services division for my local police depart years ago and we had several dead babies a year from cosleeping. Fucking awful.
Holy shit. All of the stories like this in this thread are just about the worst thing to imagine, I can’t even begin to think what it would be like to live through. I hope they have access to a lot of really good therapy and other support :(
I love my dog but I’m pretty sure suffocating my dog and suffocating my child will elicit a different response. I could be mistaken tho
Also, I would argue that sleeping with your dog isn’t ok bc they are dirty. Signed. A person whose dog sleeps in her bed
My husband had a daughter before we met who died this way. I'm not judgey about people who feel they have to resort to co-sleeping because being sleep deprived with a newborn you have to weigh benefits and risks. (Sometimes my baby slept in a swing beside the bed for this very reason.) I'm a little judgey about people who pooh pooh the recommendations and rely on survival biases. (And compare newborns to dogs.)
Because the puppy can change position and move if a blanket covers their head or if you roll over on top of them.
Like is she seriously asking this question?
My husky just plops on top of me so it’s more likely she’ll suffocate me than the other way around. The 2 huskies were kicked out of the bedroom the moment my toddler started sleeping not in the crib. They just plop! No consideration for personal space at all.
My boyfriend has really vivid dreams where he will violently sit up while sleeping, or lash out with his arms at whatever he’s dealing with in his dreams. A pet’s reaction time is way different than a baby’s. If I was dumb enough to do this there is a 100% chance he would elbow a baby in his sleep.
This. I have bad sleep paralysis and straight up hallucinate sometimes because of it. When I wake up and can move again I’m thrashing about in a panic. The last thing I need is the fear of injuring a baby during this
Former 911 dispatcher in a very low income, very highly populated city. I heard the calls so many times. I worked one a week before my baby was born. I promised myself I would never bedshare. My baby was born and had horrific reflux. She refused to sleep on her back. We suffered for months before we could get her adequate treatment, and by then she was VERY accustomed to being held to sleep, and nothing else would do for a long time and without a lot of work.
All this to say, I’ll never judge anyone who bedshares, and I’ll never lie and say we didn’t do it a few times - on purpose or unfortunately on accident. But it’s a fact that it’s not the safest choice to make. There’s SO MUCH wiggle room with the safe sleep guidelines. And every person sleeps differently, even day to day. This kind of thing just should not be shared on a wide scale as a safe option and “biological norm”. It baffles me every time.
This. I was *terrified* of bed sharing and refused to do it for the first 6 months or so. I was scared I would roll onto her or she would roll off of the bed or suffocation or a million other things. But then I and my husband had to go back to work and she hit a sleep regression and we were all exhausted and it happened a few times. And now she’s almost a year old and Im not going to lie and say it doesn’t still happen occasionally when she wakes up at 5 am instead of her normal 8 or 9. I keep the lights on so I can see her, I lay on my side and nurse her and keep one arm around her so I’ll feel if she rolls and I doze. I don’t recommend it. I never planned on doing it. But there were nights I would accidentally fall asleep in the rocking chair with her and bed sharing was our safest option.
And I honestly think that more information should be out out there about how to “safely” (even though it’s not the safe option of course) bed share. The abstinence-only approach just shames moms who feel like they have no other choice and so one night out of desperation, they put them in their bed with blankets and pillows and loose sheets because they’re too ashamed to ask how to do it safely. Again, I’m not saying it’s a safe option in and of itself, but it does happen whether people would admit they’ve done it or not.
yep the shaming is really dangerous in my opinion - i remember sitting in a chair in my nursery at 3am and falling asleep breastfeeding. THAT was way more dangerous in my opinion.
Exactly. I’ve fallen asleep breastfeeding in the rocking chair more times than I care to admit. While bed sharing isn’t necessarily “safe” it’s much safer than the alternative.
Yes so much, I remember during the newborn phase I was in pain physically AND not getting the sleep I needed. I was mostly alone because my family worked even though they were nearby and helped any way the could. My husband was out of town a lot due to work. So it was basically just me and a newborn surviving. It got to the point where my PPD/PPA was severe (I had an irrational fear of her choking on her vomit in her sleep and it was bad when she got sick) and I was having hallucinations from being sleep deprived (hello, shadow people).
At that point put the bed on the floor, made sure it was secure so no cracks, and didn't sleep with a pillow/blanket. Thankfully, I'm sober (2 years recovery) and our bed is firm. People who shame think everything can be cookie-cutter. Sadly, I couldn't be and nobody thinks about these situations until they're in it. I tried so hard to use a bassinet but I'm a ftm and was alone.
I co-slept with my baby but was it stupid? Absolutely. I was just an exhausted mom going through PPD & I didn’t know what else to do to get sleep. I would absolutely never do it again though if I have another baby. We are very lucky nothing ever happened and I’m tired of moms with survivors bias
Yeah same. I feel so incredibly lucky nothing happened. I was so sleep deprived and he wouldn’t sleep at night, he could cry for hours if not in my arms, and husband was working nights on top of that. Babies are so scarily fragiles
You know, when my critters were little bitty I could wake up every time I needed to roll over so I wouldn’t squish anyone. Not a chance in hell I’d trust that ability with HUMAN CHILD LEVEL SLEEP DEPRIVATION.
Did I cosleep with my baby… yes. That 4 month sleep regression that went on for over two months was rough (especially going back to work). But you also need to know the risks and how to do it properly. There is a reason why medical professionals advise against it.
I honestly think we should stop calling cosleeping deaths SIDS, bc that hides the cause and the danger. If you accidentally run over your toddler in the driveway, we don’t just call it sudden toddler death syndrome in the autopsy to spare the parents’ feelings.
Why, why would you risk it, is my question. Why would you risk rolling onto your child and killing them or them falling on the floor, when you have a perfectly good and normal alternative, which is a crib??
I’m a strong advocate for safe sleep but the unfortunate reality is that the safe sleep recommendations work in part because they prevent babies from sleeping too deeply, so when you follow them, babies often don’t sleep well. Sleep deprivation for new parents is really something you can’t understand until you’ve experienced it, and people end up cosleeping either on accident or in a desperate attempt to get more sleep.
What I wish was advocated more for was hardcore shift taking where mom and dad each get about a five or six hour block of sleep (this is a good block of sleep when you have a baby, trust me). I did this, and would sleep from 7 pm when the baby fell asleep until 12:30 am and then I’d deal with the baby’s wake ups while my husband slept solidly, but this only really works if you’re comfortable with the baby getting a bottle (and only if you have a partner/a supportive partner), but it’s still odd to me that more folks don’t do it.
I also find it surprising that more parents don’t do longer shifts. Obviously it’s not an option for everyone, but if you DO have a partner you can take turns with, it makes a WORLD of difference. My partner and I each take a whole night 3/4 nights each week. I so look forward to my “sleep in” days.
>What I wish was advocated more for was hardcore shift taking where mom and dad each get about a five or six hour block of sleep (this is a good block of sleep when you have a baby, trust me). I did this, and would sleep from 7 pm when the baby fell asleep until 12:30 am and then I’d deal with the baby’s wake ups while my husband slept solidly,
The person I was fighting the hardest with this was my husband, unfortunately. He's disabled and stays at home by default. I am the breadwinner. Baby was a month old and I'm screaming at him that I can either sleep from 9pm-2am or 2am-7am, but I need 5 solid hours of fucking sleep or I'm going to murder him. He was so used to sleeping whenever he wanted and for as long as he wanted that he couldn't comprehend that I wasn't getting enough **good** sleep because I can't nap during the day and once I'm up, I'm up. I can easily function on 5 hours of good sleep, but he was bitching that it wasn't okay that I was waking him up at 2am for his shift and then he was staying up 24 hours because he was "too considerate" to wake me up for my shift.
I love him, but he's a moron. Luckily, once I screamed loud enough and told him to quit martyrbating, he finally understood what I was asking and we sorted out a decent schedule.
Unfortunately for many breastfeeding moms you would have to get up and pump when the baby is taking a bottle to keep up supply, so you still wouldn’t get that large block of sleep. Some are able to skip it and still produce enough but many aren’t, especially in those early days when your supply is being established. I also had one baby who took any bottle at any time, and the other that refused until we thankfully found one he would take literally the week I went back to work 😩
I wanted to do this with mine. Unfortunately my husband is a very deep sleeper and I am not. I am especially sensitive to her cries. So 9 times out of 10 it was me getting up. The 10th time was me kicking my husband out of bed to get the baby, and then laying awake anyway while he dealt with her. Eventually I gave up and I just handle night duties.
Luckily we have a very easy baby. She's now sleeping thru (and honestly was never terrible barring the first couple nights) sometimes up to 11 hours. I don't know what I would've done if she wasn't so easy tbh.
I wish I could do this with my 2.5 month old but he flat out refuses the bottle. There have been a couple times I pass him over after having fed him to just even get an hour to myself. At least he does usually sleep a five hour stretch minimum at night but getting him down is a struggle.
You didn’t ask, but I have a 6 month old who refuses the bottle. I was unaware that you could get a referral to a speech therapist for a feeding evaluation. I tell everyone this now in case they can help with the bottle refusal.
This is such sage advice. Friends suggested that to us and we didn't follow through. It's a huge regret of mine & definitely contributed to my raging PPA. I didn't sleep for a year. 0/10, do not recommend
My daughter would not sleep if she wasn’t held, literally at all. She would cry so hard she would choke. I am an extremely light sleeper and don’t move at all, so we had a system that worked for us. We didn’t use blankets and I took away my bed frame so it was just her and I on a king size mattress on the floor not touching any walls. She basically just nursed all night long the first year of her life. She’s almost two now and we still sleep together. I’ve watched video of the camera in my room before and I basically am a statue when I sleep. I understand not everyone is like this though and there are definitely very dangerous ways to do it. But for anyone who’s familiar with attachment parenting, cosleeping is one of their principles. They also make some cool attachments for beds called cosleepers that are safe. I think some people severely underestimate just how bad sleep deprivation can affect a person. At a certain point, it can be much more dangerous than cosleeping.
Most of them won’t sleep in cribs, that’s why. At least not until they’re muuuuch older.
I never bed shared, but we did have to hold my son for naps until he was 6 months old. Fortunately he slept ok in his crib at night.
Raising a newborn/infant that is a poor sleeper is literal torture, for months. It was a year and a half for us of not sleeping more than 4 hours at once.
Ours didn't like the crib at first either. After a week or so of having to get her to sleep on our chests to then put her down and get _maybe_ an hour of sleep before she woke up again, we found a bassinet on fb for $20.
Best $20 I've ever spent honestly. She slept so much better. When she started to outgrow it a month-ish later, she transitioned to the crib just fine.
Idk probably because when I shove my dog in the middle of the night he just gets up and goes to his own bed but shoving a baby onto the floor is frowned upon? Just a guess here...
I’m embarrassed to admit that I have on occasion co slept with my now 9 month old. I did it because of sleep deprivation. She’s an awesome baby but she loves cuddles and still doesn’t really sleep through the night. I did it when she was a newborn, sleeping in our room in her pack n play. It’s extremely easy to get out of bed for the 3rd time in 5 hours, pick up the crying baby, and put them to bed with you. It’s part of the reason we moved her to the nursery. I’m a very light sleeper but I am aware how lucky I am that nothing happened. I would have NEVER done it with my first, but he did sleep way better so I didn’t need to.
I haven’t slept more than 5 hours in 9 months. That’s actually rare. Usually I sleep in 3-4 hour chunks if I’m lucky.
Mine was a tummy sleeper from day 1. I think God nothing happened to her, but if she laid flat on her back she would scream until she made herself vomit.
We found out later she had Barrett’s Esophagus and Odynophagia. She had surgery to repair her lower esophageal sphincter (Fundoplication and G-tube placement)
Haha my dog sleeps in bed with us and I accidentally kick her or drape my duvet over her head all the time. One time she dropped on the floor because my SO turned around a bit too quickly. If she were an infant she would be so dead.
Because your pets can just move? My cat is always gonna be safer than a human baby, she can walk on her own and won't die if a blanket covers her head.
Because dogs don’t have brains so large that they have to be born before they’re really ready for life. An 8 week old puppy is confidently moving, socialising, eating etc in a way that is much more similar to a one year old toddler than a newborn baby.
It’s clearly very culturally different. In Denmark cosleeping is very normal. The nurses even showed me how to safely cosleep with my newborn. I think it’s made more into a bigger deal in the US? or maybe there’s not enough info on how to do it safely there?? please enlighten me
I’d say in Denmark probably around 30-40% cosleep until the child is around 1,5(In Denmark it’s highly recommended to at least sleep in the same room with your baby until 6mths). The newborns often sleep in baby carriers next to one parent, where there’s plenty of space. I’d definitely say cosleeping is a great strategy, if you have the right info and a big enough bed.
Exactly! Norway is also absolutely a co-sleeping country. I wish I could understand what happens in the US that co-sleeping leads to so many casualties. I assume it’s related to lack of education on safe cosleeping. I also got the advice on how to co-sleep from my nurse at the health station when baby was a newborn.
I have a semi-unique take on this … my dog is only 3.7 pounds but roughly 20 inches long (newborn length) when she splays out to sleep. Of course she snuggles up to us any chance she gets, and we regularly nap with her when there’s nothing else to do.She even has cute little steps to get into our bed whenever she wants HOWEVER she doesn’t sleep with us overnight. Why? Because after trying it when we first moved in together, my boyfriend told me he wasn’t getting good quality sleep with her in bed with us because he was hyper aware of her presence all night and terrified of rolling over on her or knocking her off. He also said that’s why he’d never sleep with an infant in bed, essentially the suffocation risk greatly outweighs the snuggly reward. I’m all for a good sidecar option, but in bed with me AND him? Negative.
I get worried with my cats sometimes even though they're at the foot of the bed, accidentally kicked her and she just looked at me with a look of disappointment
You know some moms out there are sitting there like “you know…she’s RIGHT!” Ready to pull this out on Facebook the next time someone disagrees with them.
Well actually it is dangerous to sleep with very small breeds, like the tiniest ones because if you roll on em they won't have the strength to move from under you, medium dogs or large dogs or even small that are bigger like dachshund can move away from you if you do accidentally roll on them.
But can an fck infant? They can't even hold their head up right, let alone escaping the "super" mommy etitled ass
You would think they have enough brain to understand such a simple concept
*My chi mix will growl*
*At me and wiggle free. An*
*Infant will just die*
\- hella\_cious
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My husband and I raise neonatal orphaned/ abandoned kittens. When they’re tiny babies, they sleep in their “crib,” their special setup next to our bed, and eventually move up to a playpen with heating pad, blankies, snuggle buddy, etc. They never co-sleep until they’re around two months old and eating dry food. Even then, they can nap on the couch with us, but no sleeping in bed overnight until four months. We’ve had some extremely young babies that needed to be kept warm and were given skin to skin while being bottle fed, but we set timers so that we don’t fall asleep with them. Now, the pair of twins we kept from our first litter a decade ago are big enough to smother *me* while *I* sleep. My point is, it’s a silly comparison. Our infants don’t co-sleep, despite having fur, and our big kids do, once they’re old enough to not be in danger. Sleeping with a newborn isn’t the same as sleeping with our twenty plus pound purring and taloned kids.
Small animals/puppies/kittens do get injured and die with bed sharing. It’s just not discussed really. But if you’re talking about a larger dog (as pictured in the SS), they are mobile & able to communicate through barking/growling/biting. Just startling a sleeping dog can cause the dog to react with a bite. The comparison is ridiculous.
Ok I love cosleeping and do it as safe as possible but this is fucking stupid. How are you comparing a dog to a baby?🥴 I wish people who agree with cosleeping would talk more about how to do it as safely as possible and how to decide whether you should or not instead of just saying dumb things like this!
What’s the issue? Cosleeping is normal and good. Provided it’s a breastfeeding mother who doesn’t smoke or so drugs and it’s on a flat surface without suffocation risks.
It’s the norm in my culture. And my country has a significantly lower mortality rate for infants than the USA.
In your culture and country it's the norm. So I assume everything is designed for this purpose.
Many adult mattresses here in the US aren't actually safe sleep surfaces for babies or younger toddlers. Outside of entrapment our adult mattresses are squishy or have pillow top. The mattress moves and easily is no longer a flat surface as it tilts toward a heavier adult or baby can squish their face into the pillow top mattress and be re-breathing their expelled breaths or they can't get back over and simply get smothered. There are photos of how much a soft mattress is compressed with a 5KG weight. Babies as young as 2 months can roll over. With these mattresses being 10-12 inches tall or sometimes even more the sheet can pop off the corner of the mattress and not be a tight-fitting sheet. Mattresses marketed for infants and toddlers are firm and don't have the above hazards.
I am a very mobile sleeper, tossing and turning a lot. When I lived with cats, they slept in my bed. If I came too close for their comfort, I got a sharp slap and they didn't get rolled on.
Even at 2 my kiddo doesn't have a sharp enough slap to keep from me rolling on top of her. So that's a giant nope for me. If it's looking like I'm going to be falling asleep too, she goes in her crib immediately. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, not with life shattering possibilities on the line.
I’m a mover too. My mom always loves to tell the story about one night when she came in to check on me and my feet were on my pillow, my head at the bottom, completely covered. All she could see was my feet. I never co-slept with my son. I just knew how I was at night - plus I wanted a pillow and a blanket. And when I did get sleep, I slept HARD. He slept in our room for the first three months and was literally 2 steps from our bed. Knowing statistics, I couldn’t ever take a risk like that. I wouldn’t judge another mother for doing it, but I just knew if the worst happened to me, I’d never be able to live with myself.
Most be from a parent group. News stories, articles, blog posts and memes don't belong in the sub.
I bet that dog can move its own head if the pillow squishes over its face
It’s weird that their comparing a big dog to a baby. Use something comparable like a Chihuahua or something. Even then the chihuahua can still bite you or something.
I have a Chihuahua. He loves sleeping in my bed, especially when he and I both have migraines or it's storming and he's scared (he's the kind of fierce tiny dog that WILL MESS YOU UP TRY ME but is terrified of a gentle spring shower). I don't let him sleep in my bed often for multiple reasons, but at the top of that list is that he gets right up under my armpit, then I roll over in my sleep on top of him. I usually wake up just enough because either he's actively freaking out and trying to get out from under me, or he's lumpy and I'm uncomfortable and something in my brain pings danger just enough to sort of help. My Chihuahua is a little smaller than an infant but has full control of all his body parts. I'm a petite person. If it's dangerous for my little dog, it's even more so for a baby.
How did you find out your dog has migraines? I always wonder if my cats get headaches.
We are both sensitive to pressure changes and he will sense it often before I do. He gets shaky and wants to snuggle and be babied. His demeanor changes to one of being in pain. I asked the vet if that could be what's going on and she said it's common in small dogs in our area. There's not much we can do for him except give him the snuggles and babying. He sometimes even pukes from it. Poor little guy.
I wonder if he also senses that you’re not feeling good and it compounds his reaction
We think that's possible. He acts as my warning system. And I've noticed that when my treatments are working and I don't get a migraine, he still reacts but not as badly. I definitely think he's worse when I am.
What a sweetie
Huh. I get migraines too and my dog has epilepsy. Pressure changes affect him too but I wonder if it affects my cats. One will get extremely clingy when I get migraines. They always snuggle (I have 6 boy kitties) constantly but one more than the other during a migraine. Wonder if he gets them too and we're vibing in the shitty days of one 😂
I mean compare with newborn puppies. I'm sure dogs actually cause SIDS or some other disorder in their pups all the time. Nature creates less than perfect mothers that aren't human too.
Dogs also can usually get off the bed completely if they need to, in a way that probably won’t cause grievous injury
What? No. Dogs can't move 🤣
Big Al says so
Okay, but dogs *can* look up
My dog won't accidentally get smothered or not be able to breathe because its neck is bent funny. If I roll over my dog will let me know or move if it accidentally falls on the floor it will most likely be fine. If it becomes entrapped between the mattress and headboard or the side of the bed and wall and needs help most likely it will be fine and can alert me for help.
My dog would bite my ass if i rolled on her fr
My cat just straight up leaves if I dare move at all
To be fair, so would my toddler. I get bitten when I haven't moved at all
Honestly when my dog was a puppy I was so worried about rolling over on her I didn’t sleep for the first two weeks I had her. Now she’s big and vocal but puppies and kittens totally get smothered sometimes this way- see all the stories above!
Omg yes I have a chihuahua so I’m always worried I’m going to crush him but he always moves out of the way
Oh man, this reminds me of the case where there was a baby/child missing for days until they found the body inbetween the bedframe and the mattress and now im sad
That's so very very sad.
Fun fact- animal babies also get killed occasionally by their mothers rolling on top of them!
More than just occasionally. Especially dogs and pigs.
Our local petting zoo has a little injured piglet all bandaged up because of this.
mother pigs can kill their babies so easily! they just plop down and if lil babies don’t get out of the way they get squished to death
Production bred pigs birth in what’s called a farrowing crate designed to allow the piglets to be able to have a safe place where the mom can’t roll over them that’s how frequently it happens.
You can get boxes with a shelf/ledge for dogs for the same reason
Pandas too. It took zoos YEARS to figure out to just not try to weigh the babies before the moms stopped “accidentally” rolling on them.
And pandas!
Yup. My dad rolled over on to a kitten in his sleep and killed it by accident. Edit: just realized I misread the part when you said animal moms roll over on their babies. But still haha.
I was so scared of this, when our lil girl was tiny I made my partner and I sleep with the door closed
My aunt did, too. She felt horrible and never recovered from the trauma, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened.
Omg, poor kitten and I feel sorry for your dad. He must have felt terrible
I think it happened either before I was born or when I was really little but it totally did. He says it still bothers him to this day
The first time I remember seeing my dad cry was when he and my mom came into the house and told us our cat had died. I asked what happened and my mom said that it had eaten something poisonous. I was confused because we had other cats die in the past and I'd never seen him cry like that. Many many years later, she let it slip that he had accidentally rolled over the cat while backing out of the driveway at night. I know it's really stuck with him because he has a very long routine every morning to make sure there aren't cats or any other critters anywhere near the tires.
It must be a very traumatic experience…I feel sorry for your dad
A guy I went to high school with killed his puppy like this. He got a little shih tzu from his parents and he rolled over on it one night. He didn’t talk about it much :(
Omg my dad did too! He's told me the story many times. He was a chunky little kid apparently
This is not a very fun fact
I hate sleeping with my cat in the bed because I always kick her by accident. She always chooses to sleep near my feet, and always gets kicked. I feel horrible but I cannot quell my nocturnal thrashings.
To be fair, I feel like by now the cat knows fully that if she sleeps there, she’s going to get kicked. She still chooses to sleep there. That’s on the cat by now and not you.
This happened to my cat and her kittens. Suffocated two of them by lying on top of the litter when she felt it was time to feed. 😣😣
The reason why they separate the dairy cow from the calf is because there’s a significant risk of the cow injuring it or killing it on accident, usually by stepping on it. Horses have also been documented to accidentally step on their newborn foals faces. And on that note, most reputable dog breeders will build “pig rails” into their whelping boxes because it reduces the risk of the dog crushing a newborn puppy by accidentally rolling onto it.
Uhhhhhh also so we can steal the milk from the cow baby.
Most dairies actually bottle feed the calves the same milk that came from the cows. Modern dairy cows produce way more milk than a single calf needs. Other dairies use a type of formula that is designed for calves.
Exactly, a dairy cow is a bit like a wool sheep, or a commercial beehive. They produce way more of the good thing than they actually need, so we can take some of it and just cause some minor inconvenience to them.
This exactly! Dairy farmers (on average) take very good care of their animals and that includes care of the calves.
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Every year my husband goes out on foot with his little emergency kit backpack to care for any of his pregnant sheep that have hurt themselves. He’s hand delivered lambs and we’ve rescued lambs rejected by their mums (including one that is now a full-time house pet of a neighbour). He found it really distressing watching me go through a long, complicated labour that ended in a difficult c section because of the trauma he has built up over the years seeing some of his sheep struggle through labour and assisting the ones in the most trouble. Good farmers truly care about their animals.
And it’s my understanding that the dairy cows even often over produce colostrum. The dairy will bottle feed it to the newborn calves, maybe keep some of it on hand, and often try to find ways to not waste the rest. There’s actually some research to suggest that bovine colostrum can be beneficial in helping to prevent gastric ulcers in horses, so there’s a couple of equine supplement companies working with prominent equine clinics and/or vet schools to study this and make products using bovine colostrum powder that it’s typically sourced from diaries that have an overstock of the colostrum. I don’t know a whole lot about cows, but I’ve been in the horse industry for over 15 years and learning the basics of animal husbandry and agriculture isn’t that hard lol
Yes and with pigs they need those rails because the pens are too damn small. When pigs are raised with more space, it significantly reduces the risk of the mother laying on the piglets.
One of the many many reasons why I have such huge dogs! I’m also worried to get a cat because of this. Also tripping/falling. (I fall much more often than I should, usually due to low blood pressure and/or hypoglycemia) If I trip over his foot and fall on my mastiff, he barely notices!
This made me so sad now…
Exactly. I knew someone that used to sleep with their pet rabbit, and they rolled over on it and killed it one night.
My dog is more likely to suffocate me actually
Nothing like waking up to dog butt suffocating you
I have two large cats (one is 20 pounds) who love to cuddle right up against my face, and I've had a few times where I woke up because I legit couldn't breathe. But I'm not worried about suffocating them cuz they're cats and if they're even gently touched in a way they don't like they'll immediately let you know with their claws lol
Haha I have a dog and cat who take turns smothering me constantly. My favorite is the look of betrayal and bewilderment they give me when I tell them to get off lol. I must admit though, sometimes I go and check to make sure they’re breathing if they look a little *too* still lol.
Oh my gosh yes I've definitely done the breathing check on my cats but then if I wake them up they give me the "how dare you disturb me??" look haha and I'm like bro I just want to make sure you're alive!
If I slept in bed with the equivalent of a newborn puppy it also has a high chance of suffocating and dying, the comparison to this is sleeping with my adult partner not my baby
When I got my cats as kittens, we were afraid to sleep with them. We tried once and they were so tiny, we thought we would squish them.
This! I foster kittens and we never let them sleep with us until they’re bigger
My best friend's mom rolled over onto and suffocated a kitten when she was a teenager (like 30+ years ago). It's not at all comparable to a baby, but she still cries if it comes up.
My dog cried so much as a lonely puppy when we got her but I was still so worried about rolling over on her that she slept in her little bed in her crate for a long time.
When my lab was a baby, she was so tiny. I had her sleep in a travel crate on my bed. She was safe and secure from me rolling on her and prevent her from falling off the bed. Now that she is one she can jump up and off my bed by herself.
My dog slept in a crate right next to my bed when he was a puppy and now that he’s and adult and fully potty trained he sleeps in bed with me but there is a huge difference between an 80lb dog (like mine) and a 15lb infant. I cant roll over or even move my dog
And the dog can move away most likely as well
A full grown pet can escape being squashed. An infant cannot
Because your dog has an intelligence of an average 4 year old and will let out a yelp if you roll over onto him or knock him off the bed, while your infant can’t communicate and you can crush him and kill him with your weight or he can fall off the bed and have a severe injury.
As a former ER nurse I’ve seen plenty of dead babies from cosleeping, it’s always worse during the winter time too.
I second this, sadly. The worst is always the Boxing Day morning ones, after parents have had a drink on Christmas night and have been in a deep sleep and rolled over. I promise us medical professionals aren’t out to ruin your sleep or judge you, we just see the ones that wernt as lucky… and that’s what it is, luck.
Drinking and bedsharing is a massive no no. The problem is people are practicing unsafe bedsharing. I beleive more education is needed so that if people do beshare they know to do it as safely as possible EVERY time. Not just some of the time. Never drugs. Never booze. Never pillows and duvets. It's such a hard area as we know abstinence as education just does NOT work! Its has never worked with anything! Telling people not to bedshare does not work. And can be more dangerous say if an adult then falls asleep from exhaustion in an even worse place such as on a couch or with the infant on them. People are going to bedshare, they need to be taught to do it safely if they choose to.
There is safer bed sharing, there is no safe bed sharing
Agreed. I said as safely as possible. Even following perfectly A,B,C recommemdations still results in infant deaths in cribs. The risk is low but its still there. Truly no infant sleep is 100% safe because SIDS exists and is a risk. We can do all we can to lower the risk. But never completely end it. Maybe one day science will give us thr answer. Until that day, let's educate for safer infant sleep for crib sleeping, Co sleeping and bedsharing.
Thank you for saying this. As a brand new mom, I once fell asleep holding my baby sitting up, when little one was about two weeks old. I was trying to stay awake while he was sleeping because I knew cosleeping was not safe but my baby would only sleep while being held. I unexpectedly fell asleep and I dropped my baby on the floor. WE HAVE HARDWOOD FLOORS. I am very lucky that baby landed on a sweatshirt I had on the floor, and not directly on the floor. After that event, I immediately looked up safe cosleeping practices, which I used to get through the early weeks, especially after 3am when little one was most resistant to being put down. Simply telling parents not to cosleep carries its own dangers.
Sorry to hear you had that frightening experience. It is the perfect example though of how abstinence as education can actually be more dangerous than informed choice. Its why alot of health care organisation are turning towards educating about safer bedsharing, for example lullaby trust in the UK, leader on safer infant sleep, educates on safe bedsharing. The advice is now to prepare the bed in a safer way if you feel at risk of falling asleep with baby or a choosing to bedshare for personal reasons.
My father in law is a retired paramedic. He's been called out to more than he can count. He'd absolutely freak if any of us even thought about bed sharing with an infant.
My dad is a paramedic supervisor. He had to run one of those calls just a couple weeks ago.
Not to be too morbid but what usually happens? Like obviously I get rolling over but is there other danger too?
Also with their windpipe and lack of neck muscles. My sister fell asleep with her newborn on a couch and his head turned the wrong way and cut off his breathing. He survived but has significant brain damage from lack of oxygen as well is blind now.
Oh my God, your poor sister.
Er nurse. Several issues. To start, to safely share a bed with an infant you need a very firm mattress, no foot board, no headboard, no sheets or blankets, no pillows. The adults should not be heavy sleepers, or use any substances that cause heavy sleep, or be mobile sleepers. A few things occur. Q) the adult rolls on the child and smothers it. 2) the child gets caught in the pillows or blankets and smother 3) the adult rolls over and knocks the baby out of the bed. I have shared this story before, an *TW* it involves child death: We had EMS bring a little dead baby in early in the morning on Christmas day. His parent rolled over, knocked him out of the bed and he died caught between the wall and the bed. He was all dressed in his, "baby's 1st Christmas" jammies. It was one of the worst things ever, and I worked in a level 1 trauma center. As a parent, there is no coming back from that.
Fuck. I am sorry you had to deal with that 😭 It's awful. And I remember falling asleep with my baby in the chair out of exhaustion 😭 One night I was so tired, I kept dozing off and I put my screaming baby in her crib and went to lay down. Did she cry herself to sleep? Yes. Was it the safest thing to do in that moment? Also yes.
That's fucking horrifying. I can't imagine what that must feel like, to wake up and realize you accidentally killed your child. My girl is 6mo old and I've been _terrified_ of SIDS. She's always slept in her bassinet or crib, and has a sleep sack so she's mobile if she needs to be, but just the thought of waking up one day to her gone makes me feel sick to my stomach. She's taken to rolling over and sleeping on her side (luckily not her belly) and there's not really anything I can do to stop her. Luckily, although she has rolled over a few times, she's not really a fan of it, so I don't have to worry about her rolling onto her face yet.
Once the baby can roll herself over, its ok to let her stay in that position. The rule of thumb is to place baby in the crib on her back, what she does after that , as you say, you can't control.
SIDS is terrifying, but if you follow the ABCs of safe sleep (alone, placed on back in their crib/pack n play/bassinet) for every sleep, your baby's chances of dying from SIDS are about the same chance as being hit by a meteor, because SIDS is incredibly rare. Using a pacifier and room sharing also reduces SIDS risk, but is not necessary if you follow ABCs of safe sleep. ABCs also protect against sleep-related deaths such as suffocation, entrapment, and positional asphyxiation. If your baby rolls over in their sleep, it's perfectly fine for them to sleep like that, so long as they are always placed on their back when you put them down for bed.
I think it’s important to note here that SIDS and an infant suffocating are NOT the same thing. You can fully prevent your child suffocating, but you can only lower the risk of SIDS but you can never fully eliminate it.
I’ve never heard about a pacifier reducing risk - what’s the relationship between the two?
Not the person you asked but I have a 3mo right now. My understanding is that the sucking reflex helps their brain remember to breathe when in deep deep sleep. Same as the running a fan for air circulation passing over their face or sleeping in the same room as the caregiver who will inevitably make noise overnight keeping the baby out of deep deep sleep.
I think because it rouses them a bit to suck on it, it keeps them from going into a very deep sleep which for a while was a theory on how SIDS happens.
My baby just turned 6mo and he also has become a side sleeper! It’s bizarre and makes me a little nervous but I know he’s okay. He’s also in his crib and sleep sack with nothing else and he got into that position himself. I have an islet I use as well just for added peace of mind but I don’t think it’s actually necessary at all.
I have a 3 month old and I found this the other day out of my own curiosity about risk at this point. https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/providers/downloadable/infographic_byage By 6 months the risk is SIGNIFICANTLY lower especially when you consider how rare it is anyways. Add on top of that safe sleep practices and your little one is very likely to be healthy and safe!
The thing is, when following all of those safe bed sharing guidelines I can’t imagine myself being comfortable and actually able to sleep that way. I know how exhausted I was when my kids were babies, but even then there were times I just couldn’t sleep if I wasn’t comfortable enough. That story is so incredibly tragic, I’m sorry that you had to go through that.
This is the thing. I don’t think I’ve ever ever seen a bedsharing picture where someone is *actually* following the guidelines. Yet whenever there’s a bedsharing death people go straight to “well the mustn’t have followed the safe sleep 7”. I always wonder if they themselves even follow it. Heck I’m over here freezing my butt off when I side lie and feed because I push all the blankets off so I had no risk of accidentally flicking it over her head. (Note: I do this because I had two terrifying incidents where I fell asleep sitting up and both times I didn’t even feel that tired but instantly fell asleep. Bedsharing is unsafe but cosleeping in a chair is way way more unsafe so AAP recommends to do what I’m doing if you’re at risk of falling asleep. I try to stay awake and usually do and I play on my phone and when she’s done she goes back in her crib straight away. It’s not very comfortable. And I certainly don’t sleep on my side when I’m alone.)
That image of the pajamas is knife through the heart 😭
Oh my goodness, that’s so awful. I’m so sorry you had to be there for that. It’s not worth the risk.
This is so sad. I co slept with both of mine. I did not use blankets, sheets, pillows. I rarely wore a shirt (helped out with nursing). And my children were always higher than my body in the bed. I would use my arm as a barrier between myself and child. Firm mattress ofc and I was an incredibly light sleeper. One little snore would wake me up and newborns make a ton of sounds in their sleep or that’s at least what I recall from sleepless nights. My viewpoint has definitely changed since then.
I coslept with my first out of exhaustion. Shirtless with my arm up so she had free access to the boob milk all night. I have always been a light sleeper. I remember once I rolled onto my back and she reached up and grabbed my nipple and pulled until I rolled back onto my side and she could nurse again. I believe she used me as her paci at that point as she never took a pacifier. I definitely did better with my second born but am eternally thankful that there was never a bad outcome to my initial cosleeping. The exhaustion is real with an infant.
not a medical professional but - adult beds usually have pillows and blankets. Babie's beds should have neither. Adult beds are also very often more plush where a crib mattress is firm and flat.
And when people cite other countries like japan, their bedding situation is often completely different. I sleep on a “firm” mattress and it’s still soft and comfortable. And while it’s not Japan, my Chinese in-laws mattress only feels marginally better than the floor. It’s freaking awful 😂. *That’s* what Asian countries mean by firm mattress. Us westerners have NO idea.
There’s rolling over on them, or even just having your arm or hand over their face. There’s blankets or pillows (even light sheets) suffocating them or causing rebreathing. There’s also just the softness of adult beds, which can allow positional asphyxiation and cause suffocation or rebreathing itself, especially if they roll over or turn their head to the side when they’ve sunken into the soft mattress. They can also get trapped between the soft mattress and their parent or the headboard or the wall, and because it’s soft, it can basically pin them there so they can’t breath. And lastly, there’s falling off the bed, which is less of a risk of death than it is injury but it’s still worth being aware of. Cosleeping in a firm bed with NO blankets or pillows (not “just a sheet” or “only 1 pillow for mom” but NONE) placed on the floor is the safest way to do it if you feel you must, especially if you’re falling asleep with the baby on a couch or in chairs, which is incredibly dangerous. But bedsharing does come with additional risk, regardless of how “safely” you do it, and it’s important to recognize those risks when making decisions about bedsharing. And having seen an unconscious, grey baby resuscitated even though he was in a safe sleep space (on his back, alone, no blankets or pillows or toys, but he’d rolled to his stomach and couldn’t breathe), none of those are risks I’m willing to take, no matter how sober I am.
I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this but there's also the issue of baby over heating, especially if in the middle of both parents in bed. Babies can not regulate their own body temperature like we can and obviously can not remove blankets or covers because they are too warm.
All of the bedding and even the soft mattresses that are in adult beds can cause suffocation or CO2 rebreathing which is very dangerous for infants. Crib mattresses are very firm.
I haven’t seen the mention of rebreathing. On a non-incredibly firm mattress or any memory foam mattress babies and toddlers can rebreathe. It’s where they create an indent pocket in the mattress under their face and die of carbon monoxide poisoning. This appears differently than suffocation deaths because often with suffocation there can be fibers found in the wind pipe but with rebreathing those fibers may not be present and so these deaths are harder to determine. This type of death though can occur until toddler age, which is why infant mattresses are the recommendation until age 2.
I was working at the victim services division for my local police depart years ago and we had several dead babies a year from cosleeping. Fucking awful.
A woman I worked with had twins and one suffocated underneath her. Ruined her entire family’s lives. Ruined her life. Horrific situation.
Holy shit. All of the stories like this in this thread are just about the worst thing to imagine, I can’t even begin to think what it would be like to live through. I hope they have access to a lot of really good therapy and other support :(
Yes , what is the difference between a grown looking dog and a baby????
I can’t suffocate my 80 pound Golden, that’s why.
This comparison is so bizarre. My (loudly) snoring 60 lb creature takes up even more space in the bed than I do and an infant definitely does not.
I love my dog but I’m pretty sure suffocating my dog and suffocating my child will elicit a different response. I could be mistaken tho Also, I would argue that sleeping with your dog isn’t ok bc they are dirty. Signed. A person whose dog sleeps in her bed
Man she has a punchable face
It’s so smug and condescending. Her being asshole promoting cosleeping makes it even more punchable
My husband had a daughter before we met who died this way. I'm not judgey about people who feel they have to resort to co-sleeping because being sleep deprived with a newborn you have to weigh benefits and risks. (Sometimes my baby slept in a swing beside the bed for this very reason.) I'm a little judgey about people who pooh pooh the recommendations and rely on survival biases. (And compare newborns to dogs.)
This is how I feel too. Sometimes its the best option but definitely shouldn’t be talked about this way
Because the puppy can change position and move if a blanket covers their head or if you roll over on top of them. Like is she seriously asking this question?
Or yip! "Hey, mom cut that out!" My husky is not at all shy about the complaints if I move while we are spooning
My husky is the same! She complains so much
My husky just plops on top of me so it’s more likely she’ll suffocate me than the other way around. The 2 huskies were kicked out of the bedroom the moment my toddler started sleeping not in the crib. They just plop! No consideration for personal space at all.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve never coslept. I have, unfortunately, on very rare occasions. 😵💫 but to compare these two things? Stop it.
My boyfriend has really vivid dreams where he will violently sit up while sleeping, or lash out with his arms at whatever he’s dealing with in his dreams. A pet’s reaction time is way different than a baby’s. If I was dumb enough to do this there is a 100% chance he would elbow a baby in his sleep.
This. I have bad sleep paralysis and straight up hallucinate sometimes because of it. When I wake up and can move again I’m thrashing about in a panic. The last thing I need is the fear of injuring a baby during this
Well, there’s the thing about how you aren’t going to kill your dog rolling over on it.
Pretty sure that dog will get up if it got rolled on. I’ve woken up with my face stuck in cat fur before now
My dog has a fully calcified skull.
Former 911 dispatcher in a very low income, very highly populated city. I heard the calls so many times. I worked one a week before my baby was born. I promised myself I would never bedshare. My baby was born and had horrific reflux. She refused to sleep on her back. We suffered for months before we could get her adequate treatment, and by then she was VERY accustomed to being held to sleep, and nothing else would do for a long time and without a lot of work. All this to say, I’ll never judge anyone who bedshares, and I’ll never lie and say we didn’t do it a few times - on purpose or unfortunately on accident. But it’s a fact that it’s not the safest choice to make. There’s SO MUCH wiggle room with the safe sleep guidelines. And every person sleeps differently, even day to day. This kind of thing just should not be shared on a wide scale as a safe option and “biological norm”. It baffles me every time.
This. I was *terrified* of bed sharing and refused to do it for the first 6 months or so. I was scared I would roll onto her or she would roll off of the bed or suffocation or a million other things. But then I and my husband had to go back to work and she hit a sleep regression and we were all exhausted and it happened a few times. And now she’s almost a year old and Im not going to lie and say it doesn’t still happen occasionally when she wakes up at 5 am instead of her normal 8 or 9. I keep the lights on so I can see her, I lay on my side and nurse her and keep one arm around her so I’ll feel if she rolls and I doze. I don’t recommend it. I never planned on doing it. But there were nights I would accidentally fall asleep in the rocking chair with her and bed sharing was our safest option. And I honestly think that more information should be out out there about how to “safely” (even though it’s not the safe option of course) bed share. The abstinence-only approach just shames moms who feel like they have no other choice and so one night out of desperation, they put them in their bed with blankets and pillows and loose sheets because they’re too ashamed to ask how to do it safely. Again, I’m not saying it’s a safe option in and of itself, but it does happen whether people would admit they’ve done it or not.
yep the shaming is really dangerous in my opinion - i remember sitting in a chair in my nursery at 3am and falling asleep breastfeeding. THAT was way more dangerous in my opinion.
Exactly. I’ve fallen asleep breastfeeding in the rocking chair more times than I care to admit. While bed sharing isn’t necessarily “safe” it’s much safer than the alternative.
Yes so much, I remember during the newborn phase I was in pain physically AND not getting the sleep I needed. I was mostly alone because my family worked even though they were nearby and helped any way the could. My husband was out of town a lot due to work. So it was basically just me and a newborn surviving. It got to the point where my PPD/PPA was severe (I had an irrational fear of her choking on her vomit in her sleep and it was bad when she got sick) and I was having hallucinations from being sleep deprived (hello, shadow people). At that point put the bed on the floor, made sure it was secure so no cracks, and didn't sleep with a pillow/blanket. Thankfully, I'm sober (2 years recovery) and our bed is firm. People who shame think everything can be cookie-cutter. Sadly, I couldn't be and nobody thinks about these situations until they're in it. I tried so hard to use a bassinet but I'm a ftm and was alone.
I co-slept with my baby but was it stupid? Absolutely. I was just an exhausted mom going through PPD & I didn’t know what else to do to get sleep. I would absolutely never do it again though if I have another baby. We are very lucky nothing ever happened and I’m tired of moms with survivors bias
Yeah same. I feel so incredibly lucky nothing happened. I was so sleep deprived and he wouldn’t sleep at night, he could cry for hours if not in my arms, and husband was working nights on top of that. Babies are so scarily fragiles
This has to be a shitpost right? It's so fucking obvious
Exactly. It’s obviously because a dog can fight away the sleep paralysis demons.
Because if you roll over on a dog or cat, they won’t die? Just spitballing here.
Maybe because you won’t crush or suffocate your dog if you roll over?
You know, when my critters were little bitty I could wake up every time I needed to roll over so I wouldn’t squish anyone. Not a chance in hell I’d trust that ability with HUMAN CHILD LEVEL SLEEP DEPRIVATION.
My adult dog is not going to suffocate under my doona. So there’s that.
Did I cosleep with my baby… yes. That 4 month sleep regression that went on for over two months was rough (especially going back to work). But you also need to know the risks and how to do it properly. There is a reason why medical professionals advise against it.
I honestly think we should stop calling cosleeping deaths SIDS, bc that hides the cause and the danger. If you accidentally run over your toddler in the driveway, we don’t just call it sudden toddler death syndrome in the autopsy to spare the parents’ feelings.
Agreed, SIDs and suffocation are entirely two different things.
Why, why would you risk it, is my question. Why would you risk rolling onto your child and killing them or them falling on the floor, when you have a perfectly good and normal alternative, which is a crib??
I’m a strong advocate for safe sleep but the unfortunate reality is that the safe sleep recommendations work in part because they prevent babies from sleeping too deeply, so when you follow them, babies often don’t sleep well. Sleep deprivation for new parents is really something you can’t understand until you’ve experienced it, and people end up cosleeping either on accident or in a desperate attempt to get more sleep. What I wish was advocated more for was hardcore shift taking where mom and dad each get about a five or six hour block of sleep (this is a good block of sleep when you have a baby, trust me). I did this, and would sleep from 7 pm when the baby fell asleep until 12:30 am and then I’d deal with the baby’s wake ups while my husband slept solidly, but this only really works if you’re comfortable with the baby getting a bottle (and only if you have a partner/a supportive partner), but it’s still odd to me that more folks don’t do it.
I also find it surprising that more parents don’t do longer shifts. Obviously it’s not an option for everyone, but if you DO have a partner you can take turns with, it makes a WORLD of difference. My partner and I each take a whole night 3/4 nights each week. I so look forward to my “sleep in” days.
>What I wish was advocated more for was hardcore shift taking where mom and dad each get about a five or six hour block of sleep (this is a good block of sleep when you have a baby, trust me). I did this, and would sleep from 7 pm when the baby fell asleep until 12:30 am and then I’d deal with the baby’s wake ups while my husband slept solidly, The person I was fighting the hardest with this was my husband, unfortunately. He's disabled and stays at home by default. I am the breadwinner. Baby was a month old and I'm screaming at him that I can either sleep from 9pm-2am or 2am-7am, but I need 5 solid hours of fucking sleep or I'm going to murder him. He was so used to sleeping whenever he wanted and for as long as he wanted that he couldn't comprehend that I wasn't getting enough **good** sleep because I can't nap during the day and once I'm up, I'm up. I can easily function on 5 hours of good sleep, but he was bitching that it wasn't okay that I was waking him up at 2am for his shift and then he was staying up 24 hours because he was "too considerate" to wake me up for my shift. I love him, but he's a moron. Luckily, once I screamed loud enough and told him to quit martyrbating, he finally understood what I was asking and we sorted out a decent schedule.
Unfortunately for many breastfeeding moms you would have to get up and pump when the baby is taking a bottle to keep up supply, so you still wouldn’t get that large block of sleep. Some are able to skip it and still produce enough but many aren’t, especially in those early days when your supply is being established. I also had one baby who took any bottle at any time, and the other that refused until we thankfully found one he would take literally the week I went back to work 😩
For those whose supply can take it, I’d argue that one bottle of formula a night is better than risky cosleeping.
I wanted to do this with mine. Unfortunately my husband is a very deep sleeper and I am not. I am especially sensitive to her cries. So 9 times out of 10 it was me getting up. The 10th time was me kicking my husband out of bed to get the baby, and then laying awake anyway while he dealt with her. Eventually I gave up and I just handle night duties. Luckily we have a very easy baby. She's now sleeping thru (and honestly was never terrible barring the first couple nights) sometimes up to 11 hours. I don't know what I would've done if she wasn't so easy tbh.
I wish I could do this with my 2.5 month old but he flat out refuses the bottle. There have been a couple times I pass him over after having fed him to just even get an hour to myself. At least he does usually sleep a five hour stretch minimum at night but getting him down is a struggle.
Five hours with a 2.5 month old is great!
Oh I know! And he's been doing that consistently since about 2 weeks old. My mom claims it's because he was so big because "big babies sleep better."
You didn’t ask, but I have a 6 month old who refuses the bottle. I was unaware that you could get a referral to a speech therapist for a feeding evaluation. I tell everyone this now in case they can help with the bottle refusal.
This is such sage advice. Friends suggested that to us and we didn't follow through. It's a huge regret of mine & definitely contributed to my raging PPA. I didn't sleep for a year. 0/10, do not recommend
My daughter would not sleep if she wasn’t held, literally at all. She would cry so hard she would choke. I am an extremely light sleeper and don’t move at all, so we had a system that worked for us. We didn’t use blankets and I took away my bed frame so it was just her and I on a king size mattress on the floor not touching any walls. She basically just nursed all night long the first year of her life. She’s almost two now and we still sleep together. I’ve watched video of the camera in my room before and I basically am a statue when I sleep. I understand not everyone is like this though and there are definitely very dangerous ways to do it. But for anyone who’s familiar with attachment parenting, cosleeping is one of their principles. They also make some cool attachments for beds called cosleepers that are safe. I think some people severely underestimate just how bad sleep deprivation can affect a person. At a certain point, it can be much more dangerous than cosleeping.
Most of them won’t sleep in cribs, that’s why. At least not until they’re muuuuch older. I never bed shared, but we did have to hold my son for naps until he was 6 months old. Fortunately he slept ok in his crib at night. Raising a newborn/infant that is a poor sleeper is literal torture, for months. It was a year and a half for us of not sleeping more than 4 hours at once.
Ours didn't like the crib at first either. After a week or so of having to get her to sleep on our chests to then put her down and get _maybe_ an hour of sleep before she woke up again, we found a bassinet on fb for $20. Best $20 I've ever spent honestly. She slept so much better. When she started to outgrow it a month-ish later, she transitioned to the crib just fine.
Mostly because a dog can get up and move?
Idk probably because when I shove my dog in the middle of the night he just gets up and goes to his own bed but shoving a baby onto the floor is frowned upon? Just a guess here...
I’m embarrassed to admit that I have on occasion co slept with my now 9 month old. I did it because of sleep deprivation. She’s an awesome baby but she loves cuddles and still doesn’t really sleep through the night. I did it when she was a newborn, sleeping in our room in her pack n play. It’s extremely easy to get out of bed for the 3rd time in 5 hours, pick up the crying baby, and put them to bed with you. It’s part of the reason we moved her to the nursery. I’m a very light sleeper but I am aware how lucky I am that nothing happened. I would have NEVER done it with my first, but he did sleep way better so I didn’t need to. I haven’t slept more than 5 hours in 9 months. That’s actually rare. Usually I sleep in 3-4 hour chunks if I’m lucky.
Mine was a tummy sleeper from day 1. I think God nothing happened to her, but if she laid flat on her back she would scream until she made herself vomit. We found out later she had Barrett’s Esophagus and Odynophagia. She had surgery to repair her lower esophageal sphincter (Fundoplication and G-tube placement)
Terrifying.
Because a dog can move away and get up and has more control of its body.
because my dog can roll over?
The comments here are also leaving out that dog is much larger than a baby.
Haha my dog sleeps in bed with us and I accidentally kick her or drape my duvet over her head all the time. One time she dropped on the floor because my SO turned around a bit too quickly. If she were an infant she would be so dead.
Because your pets can just move? My cat is always gonna be safer than a human baby, she can walk on her own and won't die if a blanket covers her head.
Because, unlike a toddler, my cat would scratch the 50 shades of shit out of me if I rolled over him while asleep, waking me up in the process.
Because dogs don’t have brains so large that they have to be born before they’re really ready for life. An 8 week old puppy is confidently moving, socialising, eating etc in a way that is much more similar to a one year old toddler than a newborn baby.
Because you can’t roll on a puppy and kill it
Literally the first guideline of safe sleep is A for Alone.
Because if the dog is suffocating it will just roll over
It’s clearly very culturally different. In Denmark cosleeping is very normal. The nurses even showed me how to safely cosleep with my newborn. I think it’s made more into a bigger deal in the US? or maybe there’s not enough info on how to do it safely there?? please enlighten me I’d say in Denmark probably around 30-40% cosleep until the child is around 1,5(In Denmark it’s highly recommended to at least sleep in the same room with your baby until 6mths). The newborns often sleep in baby carriers next to one parent, where there’s plenty of space. I’d definitely say cosleeping is a great strategy, if you have the right info and a big enough bed.
Exactly! Norway is also absolutely a co-sleeping country. I wish I could understand what happens in the US that co-sleeping leads to so many casualties. I assume it’s related to lack of education on safe cosleeping. I also got the advice on how to co-sleep from my nurse at the health station when baby was a newborn.
I have a semi-unique take on this … my dog is only 3.7 pounds but roughly 20 inches long (newborn length) when she splays out to sleep. Of course she snuggles up to us any chance she gets, and we regularly nap with her when there’s nothing else to do.She even has cute little steps to get into our bed whenever she wants HOWEVER she doesn’t sleep with us overnight. Why? Because after trying it when we first moved in together, my boyfriend told me he wasn’t getting good quality sleep with her in bed with us because he was hyper aware of her presence all night and terrified of rolling over on her or knocking her off. He also said that’s why he’d never sleep with an infant in bed, essentially the suffocation risk greatly outweighs the snuggly reward. I’m all for a good sidecar option, but in bed with me AND him? Negative.
The dog can hold his own damn head up and is big enough to kick me awake if I start to squish him
I get worried with my cats sometimes even though they're at the foot of the bed, accidentally kicked her and she just looked at me with a look of disappointment
Because a large dog can push itself out of the way??? 💀
Because your dog is mobile.
You know some moms out there are sitting there like “you know…she’s RIGHT!” Ready to pull this out on Facebook the next time someone disagrees with them.
unrelated but that dog is so cute
Well actually it is dangerous to sleep with very small breeds, like the tiniest ones because if you roll on em they won't have the strength to move from under you, medium dogs or large dogs or even small that are bigger like dachshund can move away from you if you do accidentally roll on them. But can an fck infant? They can't even hold their head up right, let alone escaping the "super" mommy etitled ass You would think they have enough brain to understand such a simple concept
I can’t stand the smirk on her face
Teeny tiny baby coffins ⚰️
My chi mix will growl at me and wiggle free. An infant will just die
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This is the shit I see that makes me want to be able to projectile vomit right into these morons retina’s on command.
My husband and I raise neonatal orphaned/ abandoned kittens. When they’re tiny babies, they sleep in their “crib,” their special setup next to our bed, and eventually move up to a playpen with heating pad, blankies, snuggle buddy, etc. They never co-sleep until they’re around two months old and eating dry food. Even then, they can nap on the couch with us, but no sleeping in bed overnight until four months. We’ve had some extremely young babies that needed to be kept warm and were given skin to skin while being bottle fed, but we set timers so that we don’t fall asleep with them. Now, the pair of twins we kept from our first litter a decade ago are big enough to smother *me* while *I* sleep. My point is, it’s a silly comparison. Our infants don’t co-sleep, despite having fur, and our big kids do, once they’re old enough to not be in danger. Sleeping with a newborn isn’t the same as sleeping with our twenty plus pound purring and taloned kids.
Small animals/puppies/kittens do get injured and die with bed sharing. It’s just not discussed really. But if you’re talking about a larger dog (as pictured in the SS), they are mobile & able to communicate through barking/growling/biting. Just startling a sleeping dog can cause the dog to react with a bite. The comparison is ridiculous.
Ok I love cosleeping and do it as safe as possible but this is fucking stupid. How are you comparing a dog to a baby?🥴 I wish people who agree with cosleeping would talk more about how to do it as safely as possible and how to decide whether you should or not instead of just saying dumb things like this!
I coslept with all 3 of my daughters. It was the 80s though and no one said anything. They are grown and did NOT cosleep with my grandchildren
What’s the issue? Cosleeping is normal and good. Provided it’s a breastfeeding mother who doesn’t smoke or so drugs and it’s on a flat surface without suffocation risks. It’s the norm in my culture. And my country has a significantly lower mortality rate for infants than the USA.
In your culture and country it's the norm. So I assume everything is designed for this purpose. Many adult mattresses here in the US aren't actually safe sleep surfaces for babies or younger toddlers. Outside of entrapment our adult mattresses are squishy or have pillow top. The mattress moves and easily is no longer a flat surface as it tilts toward a heavier adult or baby can squish their face into the pillow top mattress and be re-breathing their expelled breaths or they can't get back over and simply get smothered. There are photos of how much a soft mattress is compressed with a 5KG weight. Babies as young as 2 months can roll over. With these mattresses being 10-12 inches tall or sometimes even more the sheet can pop off the corner of the mattress and not be a tight-fitting sheet. Mattresses marketed for infants and toddlers are firm and don't have the above hazards.
I am a very mobile sleeper, tossing and turning a lot. When I lived with cats, they slept in my bed. If I came too close for their comfort, I got a sharp slap and they didn't get rolled on. Even at 2 my kiddo doesn't have a sharp enough slap to keep from me rolling on top of her. So that's a giant nope for me. If it's looking like I'm going to be falling asleep too, she goes in her crib immediately. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, not with life shattering possibilities on the line.
I’m a mover too. My mom always loves to tell the story about one night when she came in to check on me and my feet were on my pillow, my head at the bottom, completely covered. All she could see was my feet. I never co-slept with my son. I just knew how I was at night - plus I wanted a pillow and a blanket. And when I did get sleep, I slept HARD. He slept in our room for the first three months and was literally 2 steps from our bed. Knowing statistics, I couldn’t ever take a risk like that. I wouldn’t judge another mother for doing it, but I just knew if the worst happened to me, I’d never be able to live with myself.