Formula Feeding Implicated in Co-Sleeping Deaths
Fox news isn’t the most reputable source of information, but a recent report on co-sleeping highlights some interesting data. In Milwaukee county, 100 percent of co-sleeping deaths have involved formula fed babies.
The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly opposes co-sleeping with your baby, but many experts believe it’s safe under the right circumstances. The World Health Organization and UNICEF advocate it as the best choice for at least the first six months of baby. Co-sleeping babies have an overall lower risk of death, but critics argue that the risk of death due to suffocation in an adult bed is too high.
I have co-slept with my kids from birth till 3 a.m. last night when I kicked the little one out for being too squirmy. Which is to say, I’ve been gradually weaning them out of my bed. Co-sleeping felt right to me, and while it wasn’t always easy it remained my first choice. I also breastfed both the girls for years, and the two seemed like complementary parenting practices.
Known risk factors for co-sleeping include:
- using heavy bedding and pillows in a bed with a baby
- sharing a bed with a baby when you are intoxicated or otherwise under the influence of drugs
- sharing a bed with a baby when you’re a smoker
Turning your bed into a safe space for a baby takes a little work, but if you have a healthy home and healthy sleep habits, bringing baby to bed is generally a safe practice.
Bloggers responding to this data about formula being a possible factor in co-sleeping deaths point out some additional issues: mainly, that co-sleeping deaths most often occur in households that are low socio-economic status homes and/or unstable to begin with, and with adults who have significant drug or alcohol problems.
Perhaps most importantly, they raise the issue of intentional versus accidental co-sleeping. There’s a vast difference between passing out with your baby in your bed because you’re too drunk or exhausted to put her in a crib, and choosing to sleep with your baby because that’s how you want to parent her.
Photo: Kelly Sue
It’s about time someone pointed this out. Mothers who formula feed simply can not duplicate the connectedness that you get in a breastfeeding relationship. It may be tough for some Moms to hear that, but it can’t be refuted, and the Moms who succeed deserve recognition.
Perhaps some of these cases are of parents who choose to formula feed because they are taking drugs or are heavy drinkers. I have no idea but it all looks so fishy. Especially coming from FOx. Yuck!
A local news cast on a Fox affiliate is not the same thing as the Fox News channel.
I can’t take anything from Faux News seriously.
Interesting…will wait to see how things play out. I do agree that there is a significant difference between de facto co-sleeping (as in, pass out with the baby in bed with you) and intentional (as in, removing all blankets from the bed and setting up a way in which you cannot roll onto the child). We did our own version of cosleeping for a while, while it worked (which didn’t translate into very long as our child sleeps like I do – all.over.the.bed, which doesn’t work well)
Manjari, it’s actually a FOX affiliate, not Fox News, the evil cable news channel. I watched the report, it was actually very well done. DeerMama, I thought the drug/drinking angle too and I was wrong. Before I become a full fledged believer in the cosleeping/breastfeeding = safe angle, I would like to see a much larger study. And Hugh, I’m not going to speculate that broadly on the “connectedness” of mothers that formula feed vs. mothers that breastfeed. Not to mention if you need “recognition” from anyone outside your own family for successful breastfeeding… that’s kind of ludicrous.
PlumbLucky, my child sleeps all over the bed too. It’s amazing how small a king-size bed becomes once you add a toddler.
@M_S: yeah, husby decided that with the wif and the child doing the all over bed eggbeater moves, the queensized bed is way too small. That, and son has MY elbows (this is not a good thing, btw, I have a little extra bone on the “points” that makes them even “point-i-er”) and after going to work with a black eye for a week…
I did follow the link to the FNA – didn’t watch the video but the article that it linked to pretty much made it clear from the get that this was not a “cosleeping death”. She was drunk and rolled over onto TWO of her children, two years apart! Both died. WTF?
Ah, I see. The post says Fox News.
Connectedness. Almost as good as mommy vibes.
You don’t have it, you don’t know, I guess.
Don’t mix nasty (formula) with nice (co-sleeping).
uh…more to the point, don’t mix alcohol with co-sleeping, as plumblucky pointed out.
what a bunch of crap. i am so tired of this formula vs breastfeeding debate. it has NOTHING to do with it! conscientious parents can and do have totally bonded relationships with their babies and co-sleeping has a lot to do with that. constant loving care is what matters here.
I would definitely be interested to see a larger study on this. Also, in terns of the “connectedness”, there us quite a but of research showing that breastfeeding does cause hormonal differences in moms, including increasing the hormones that make you attentive to your baby! I know there are many times when I wake up to little baby noises that my hubby doesn’t-i’m way more “in tune” to Baby on a physical level.
This is true for one county? Do they have any data that shows this is a wider truth, because otherwise extrapolating from one county to the world seems unwarranted. There are a lot of counties out there.
We co-slept with our youngest child for several years and I seriously can’t imagine rolling over on to your child. I mean, I’ve been sharing a bed with my DH for 23 years and I’ve never randomly rolled over on top of him in my sleep either.
It occurs to me than unless you are psychic you cannot guess how connected someone is to their kids compared to how connected you are. I mean, you could have a criteria of behavior and attitudes that means connected to you, but by that standard you may not be as connected as that person feel they are.
You probably would believe that I feel no connection at all with my bottle-fed, slept in their own beds from the start, twins. And unless we develop psychic powers, I would have no way of proving you wrong.
I know several amazing, connected moms who formula feed for reasons that are no one’s business by their own. breast feeding has been a wonderful experience for me and for my son, but several of my friends have either not been able to do so or have chosen not to do so and they are amazing moms who are incredibly bonded with their children. If you can, and wish, to breastfeed, that is wonderful, but please don’t judge people who don’t. And, please see #5 in this article from the SIDS foundation website: http://www.cjsids.org/component/content/article/70-medical-journal-abstracts/47-11-ways-to-protect-your-baby.html While Fox News is not in any way, shape or form reputable, the SIDS foundation is
On the formula issue I wonder if there’s also a connection between the physical connection. I know whenever I co-slept with my kids it’s because we both fell asleep while the baby was nursing. If you’re bottle-feeding, you don’t have the baby’s mouth in constant contact with your body, reminding your subconscious that you have the baby near you.
I would like to SERIOUSLY challenge a large number of other commenters. I was unable to breastfeed my daughter for medical reasons. I’m also a big proponent of attachment parenting. It was important to me to make bottle feeding as close as possible to what our breastfeeding relationship would have been. For me, that meant giving every feeding with the bottle lying parallel across my chest while holding her in a nursing position. Every. single. feeding. For me, this also meant co-sleeping. We co-slept part time for the first 5 months and full time from 5 months till now (19 months) and I have been fully aware of every single kick, bump, sniffle, wiggle and sigh every single night thus far. I feel every bit as in tune with her at night as I do in our waking hours. I’m sick of all the bottle feeding mom guilt. Where’s the harm reduction in this? Gee, we’re sorry that your breasts didn’t work well enough, or even that breast feeding just wasn’t the right choice for your family so we’ve decided there’s no way to sleep next to your child? I don’t argue with the study at all, I get the statistical implications. The implications being made in the comments are beyond unreasonable. Perhaps we should be making recommendations for bottle feeding moms to only co-sleep part time while baby is too young to roll over (never while exhausted, never on the couch…etc) and teaching moms proper bed preparation and positioning techniques rather than writing this off as another evil of the terrible formula moms? Besides, everyone claiming the connection isn’t the same, wouldn’t co-sleeping be a great way to grow a connection that the poor mothers might be heartbroken they may be losing due to formula feeding? I get the biochemical reaction caused by breastfeeding, but I truly believe there are ways of what I call active bottle feeding that can genuinely mimic the breastfeeding relationship and should be embraced and encouraged. Even tonight, despite the fact that my wonderful girl is old enough that bottles are only water and only for bedtime, I watched my daughter drift off in my arms, after a big sloppy toddler kiss and an ‘I wuv you mama’, on our large, stripped down futon with the safety bar on the side. And that’s where she’ll stay, bottle or no bottle, until she’s ready to be on her own. Lets all throw the bottle feeding mamas a bone.