The Pros and Cons of Co-Sleeping

While some parents believe that co-sleeping is the most natural way to handle the challenges of nighttime parenting—after all, haven't parents and babies been sleeping together for thousands of years?—others are opposed. Some parents opt out of co-sleeping because they feel that they need some space and privacy in the middle of the night or because they're concerned that sleeping together could be harmful to the baby.

Other parents express concern about the safety of co-sleeping—and there has been some research to back up those concerns. A study at the Washington University School of Medicine found that bed sharing may increase the risk of suffocation or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) because an infant may become wedged beneath an adult's body, underneath the covers, or in the crevices of soft furniture. Other studies have indicated that the risk of SIDS also increases if a baby sleeps with someone who smokes, who has consumed alcohol or a drug of any type that might make them less able to respond to the baby (e.g., cough syrup formula that makes you extra drowsy), who is severely obese (due to the increased risk of accidentally lying on the baby), or who is an exceptionally heavy sleeper.

If you do decide to share your bed with your baby, here are some important points to keep in mind:

Your baby needs to sleep on a firm, flat mattress, regardless of whether he ends up sleeping in a crib or on your bed. If you sleep on a waterbed or an overly soft mattress, you can't provide your baby with a safe sleeping environment, so co-sleeping is not a reasonable option. But even if your mattress itself is suitably firm, you need to consider some related safety issues. Is there a gap between the mattress and the headboard (or even the mattress and the wall) where a baby could become trapped? What can you do to prevent the baby from falling out of bed and sustaining an injury? These are important issues that you'll need to resolve before making the decision to co-sleep.

It's best to go to bed in your heaviest pajamas and sleep with a light blanket—or, better yet, no blanket at all—than to expose your baby to a lot of heavy bedding. Research has shown that babies who breathe in "stale air" (previously breathed-in air that has pooled around their faces) face a higher risk of SIDS than other babies, due to the higher concentration of carbon dioxide.

Doing so will significantly reduce your baby's risk of succumbing to SIDS, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

You want your baby to be warm, but not too warm, so you'll want to keep in mind that your baby will be getting some heat from your body if you are sleeping together. The best way to gauge whether a baby is becoming overheated is to place your hand on the back of the baby's neck. If he's sweating, he's too warm.

If you're already sharing your bed with another child, it's not safe to add a baby to the mix. Young children are notoriously heavy sleepers, so it's possible that your three-year-old could roll on top of the baby, accidentally causing suffocation. And don't forget to consider whether your partner exhibits any risk factors that would make him a poor candidate for co-sleeping with your baby: e.g., smoking, drinking, taking any drug that could make him extra sleepy, being a heavy sleeper, or being severely obese.

Even if you usually co-sleep with your child, you might want to consider an alternate sleeping arrangements on nights when you might exhibit some of those risk factors yourself—for example, if you have a couple of glasses of wine at a party or you take a cold capsule to help you to ward off a miserable cold. Co-sleeping doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. You can do it on a part-time basis.