Co-Sleeping can be hazardous... or... once is a tragedy.. twice?

[Pointmonger]

Originally Posted by spauldingrules

I got a bunch o kids and they all co-slept. Perfectly natural and normal. Problems arise from three things:
1. Booze
2. Drugs
3. Obesity

All three can cause a parent to crush the kid and not know it. I slept so lightly that at any cough, bump, or whimper I was wide awake.

Honestly, I sleep like a dead man and would be afraid to have an infant sleeping in the bed with me, because I might not notice. Plus all the pillows and bedding a child could get caught up in and get stuck in a non-breathing position...well, I wouldn't want to think about the possible result.

On a side note, I do co-sleep with my dogs (yeah, yeah, I know, disgusting...whatever) and I'm the only one under any threat of possible suffocation.

[dented]

Friends of mine slept with their new kittens between them. Husband, 360lbs and wife about 325 lbs. Kittens suffocated between them. About 30 years ago. I thought it was very bizarre and I believed alcohol was involved at the time.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by spauldingrules

I got a bunch o kids and they all co-slept. Perfectly natural and normal. Problems arise from three things:
1. Booze
2. Drugs
3. Obesity

All three can cause a parent to crush the kid and not know it. I slept so lightly that at any cough, bump, or whimper I was wide awake.

+1
Been there, done that. Having a set of size two child's feet in your face tends to keep you at a respectable distance while sleeping.

I would suspect there's something from the above list that contributed and two of those three involve negligence.

I cannot fathom the tragedy involved in losing a child, but it seems criminal for it to happen a second time. What's that quote about the definition of insanity -- doing the same act continuously but expecting different results.

If the shoe fits...

"You need a license to own a dog, but any butt-reamin' a$$h*le can be a parent." - Keanu Reeves as Todd in Parenthood

We have all made mistakes, but if negligence was involved, losing a second child is inexcusable and they need to be held accountable.
Unfortunately, punishing them will not bring either of the children back.

"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action." - Ian Fleming

[boris bubbanov]

The Good Lord is trying to give us some gentle direction here,

but we're not getting it.

First you gotta convince me the kids would've been any brighter than they are. On the other hand, hard to see how the kids could be less smart.

The world's a cruel place, and getting more overcome with the crowds every day. Maybe there's still a place for the excess folks, over by Chernobyl or something.


On a brighter note, SIDS mortality is way down, isn't it?

[Westerly Sunn]

Originally Posted by hannigan

Baby sitting .

Oh, no... Not like Christopher and Adrianna's puppy?

[Mad Kiwi]

Here is an honest question, what did people do before the industrial revolution say 150 - 200 years ago and beyond....?

I "imagine" co sleeping was pretty common back then and prior, especially in very cold climates..... but stand to be corrected...?

We get all caught up in research and this is right that is wrong, oh no we got it wrong, that is right and this is wrong... crap.... Eating bread can lead to cancer, oh no new research says bread doesn't cause cancer.. and so on..

I simply feel sorry for these poor people to suffer such an unfathomable tragedy.

Whether they didn't believe the advice, got conflicting advice or whatever, just a tragedy.

Here is another question, is it possible to identify/seperate cot death from how this happened, maybe it was a case of cot death wrongly attributed....(possibly quite different but just a thought...)

[SamClemons]

You have to be careful with this, but there is a type of baby bed that attaches to the side of your bed, called a co sleeper that works really well. We have used this system. I sleep heavy and don't like a child between me and my wife. If you are interested, google the term co sleeper.

Note that infants have suffocated in nearly every type of baby bed and sleeping arrangement. The list of recalls on baby beds and deaths is tremendous. So not co sleeping is not hazard free either. There are a multitude of hazards and reasons for these deaths.

[' burn 08]

I would like to clarify that my above comments were not pro or anti co-sleeping. Not having any children of my own I don't have a dog in that fight. My problems come with the parents going right back to doing the thing that reportedly caused the death of their first child. I would imagine the safety issues around co-sleeping are highly dependant on the circumstances and persons involved. And as far as there being an other reason the child may have died and it wrongfully being attributed to co-sleeping, well, it's hard to tell that without isolating the factors. If I were running a science experiment and I attributed an effect to a particular cause, I might isolate that factor from the experiment and run it again to see if the results differ and how they differ. Unfortunately, in circumstances like this, there is no re-doing the experiment.

[' burn 08]

and I can greatly relate to Getbent's sentiments above about those who chose a course of action that flies in the face of empirical data and then are surprised when the outcome reflects what the data showed.

I have many clients who call up and ask what needs to be done to create a certian outcome regarding their cases. I tell them the steps that they need to take. Then a few weeks later I usually get a call from the client who is wondering why the desired outcome was not achieved. I then ask them if they completed the actions that I advised them of. 99.9% of the time they did not. I have never understood how someone can be told what they need to do for something to happen, not do it, and fully expect their desired outcome to happen anyway. smh.

[sixstringbastard]

Idiots. Their behavior is a form of child abuse

[' burn 08]

Originally Posted by sixstringbastard

Idiots. Their behavior is a form of child abuse

technically yes. If it is found that their actions were negligent, negligence = child abuse. But, as much as it appears to me and some others that this may be a case of neglect, in the grand scheme of things our opinions are just that, opinions. It will be up to a jury to decide if this was a criminal action or not.

[ggiles]

... prior to the industrial revolution.... you were lucky to live past the age of 2.

We've learned many things and keep pushing our life expectancy through simple things and great advances. Now we just have to learn how to survive ourselves.

[middy]

My first kid co-slept with us. But, then again, we weren't a pair of fat drunks... hah!

In defense of the couple, the autopsy couldn't determine the cause of death. I was under the impression that asphyxiation could be determined by an autopsy. Or maybe I just watched Quincy M.E. too much....

[cnote]

In one of the articles I read (thanks, getbent for telling me about google) there was mention that she was using xanax.

It boils down to having common sense and actually using it. I know I sleep very soundly therefore I don't sleep with my infant daughter and didn't when my 4 year old was wee. Others, as they have posted, are fine with it and I can see how it would be a cool bonding thing for a family to do.

I've read a bunch about SIDS and from what I've learned some of the deaths are attributable to a genetic condition where an infant doesn't produce enough serotonin. You can do everything right, kid on their back, no blankets, no toys, firm mattress, etc. and if the kid has this deficiency it can cause them, if they get in a position where they are rebreathing their own air, to not move or yawn to get some good O2 laden wind in em. So even technically those deaths aren't SIDS (which by definition is infant death with no known cause), they are suffocation.

The numbers on SIDS have always been ambiguous and skewed due to it's definition and lack of real hard data. Again, I'm no expert, just a parent who had the bejeezus scared out of him by doctors, pamphlets and innerwebs so I did some of my own research.

Danged if ya do, danged if ya don't. Best we can do is make our own decisions and learn from past experiences, which the couple in question obviously didn't and tragedy resulted.

[middy]

Originally Posted by ' burn 08

technically yes. If it is found that their actions were negligent, negligence = child abuse. But, as much as it appears to me and some others that this may be a case of neglect, in the grand scheme of things our opinions are just that, opinions. It will be up to a jury to decide if this was a criminal action or not.

She's already been convicted of felony child endangerment.

[Arbiter]

Originally Posted by Mad Kiwi

Here is an honest question, what did people do before the industrial revolution say 150 - 200 years ago and beyond....?

More than 1 in 2 kids didn't make it past age 5.

Average lifespan was 35 years.

Life was nasty, brutish and short, as someone smarter than me once said.

[Tonemonkey]

The closest we got to co-sleeping was to put the cot up to the bed, so we could reach the baby.We were scared of just this sort of "accident".

Its not negligence on the part of the subjects, the practice strikes me as Reckless. I feel sorry for the babies.

[sixstringbastard]

Once is reckless, twice is negligience

Originally Posted by Tonemonkey

The closest we got to co-sleeping was to put the cot up to the bed, so we could reach the baby.We were scared of just this sort of "accident".

Its not negligence on the part of the subjects, the practice strikes me as Reckless. I feel sorry for the babies.

[jazztele]

I think once is a sad tragedy, twice is inexcusable.

Co-sleeping is a BIG deal. If you're going to do it, it simply has to be done with extreme care...

[' burn 08]

Originally Posted by middy

She's already been convicted of felony child endangerment.

I must have misse that. I just thought she had been charged.

edit: just re-read the article. It absolutely does say convicted.