Dear Readers,

Hmm…the anti-bedsharers are at it again. According to a January 26 article in the Baltimore Sun, entitled “Don’t Share Bed with Infants, Parents Told,” a study published in this month’s Pediatrics journal claims that infant deaths as the result of bedsharing are on the rise.

Except that it really doesn’t prove it.

According to the journal article, the rate of accidential suffocation deaths among infants increased fourfold during the past two decades. The reason being is not that there have necessarily been more deaths, but that the reporting and classification was done differently for this particular study led by Carrie Shapiro-Mendoza, an epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As attachment parents, reading these kinds of articles can be scary to us, making us second-guess ourselves and our choices. These articles can also put us on the defensive, making us angry or driving us to practice Attachment Parenting in silence, afraid to speak up in case some one should criticize the way we parent.

We need to realize that the researchers behind these studies and the authors behind these articles have one thing in mind when it comes to co-sleeping: To stop it. They ignore the research supporting co-sleeping and highlight the research that supports their agendas. No matter what drives their decision to fight co-sleeping and Attachment Parenting, they do not have the quality of the parent-child relationship in mind and, therefore, truly do not have the child’s best interest in mind.

API’s Research Group confirms that co-sleeping can be safe…very safe. As parents, we need to be sure we are providing a safe co-sleeping environment and that we help other parents and health professionals learn how to ensure safe infant sleep through co-sleeping. This is why API launched the Safe Infant Sleep Campaign in November 2008. We are offering you an counter-offensive against the attacks from a non-AP society that is bent on ending co-sleeping. Click here to read more about the campaign and to download our free brochure on safe co-sleeping, which you can keep for your own reference as well as print and pass around in your community.

In the Baltimore Sun article, Shapiro-Mendoza says: “These deaths are likely preventable. So this problem is ongoing, and we should not divert our attention. … We need an infusion of more efforts to make them reduce further.”

That’s right. But the answer to this problem isn’t to try to outlaw co-sleeping. No matter what officials do, parents will still co-sleep. Parents have been co-sleeping since the beginning of time; it’s our instinct to build that foundation for a strong emotional bond with our child. No, the solution is to educate parents on how to co-sleep safely.

~ Rita Brhel, editor of The Attached Family publications