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When Mount Isa’s Carly Grubb had her first child she felt like a failure because her baby didn’t sleep “properly”.
Key points:
- Health authorities do not recommend co-sleeping for infant health
- But a midwifery professor says it can be done if guidelines are followed, as 90 per cent of the world’s population share sleep
- Sleep-deprived parents have found a Facebook group that shares education, tips, and support
Ms Grubb said, by the time her first child was five months old, she had been diagnosed with postnatal depression and had hit what she called “rock bottom”.
“None of the services around me seemed to be able to tell me what I could do to live life with this baby who didn’t respond to the [sleeping or settling] techniques that everyone said would work,” she said.
“We were very much alone, and isolated.
“At one point I didn’t want to live life, but thankfully I got help.”
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Ms Grubb said it was while talking to a midwife that she was asked what she thought her baby wanted when he was unsettled.
“I said ‘He just wants me’, and she just said to me to just do it [let him sleep in her bed],” she said.
“It sounds so simple, but I really didn’t think I could just do that.
“I felt like I was doing it all wrong and failing somehow — like I was failing him, and failing me, and not being a good enough mother.”
It was then that Ms Grubb turned to co-sleeping — a practice where parents share a bed with their baby or young child — something that would not only change her life, but save it.
Queensland Health and SIDS for Kids do not recommend co-sleeping, but Ms Grubb started a small Facebook group three years ago about the practice and it now has more than 86,000 members from all over the world.
Beyond sleep training
When Danielle Ford had her daughter, Sienna, 12 months ago, she quickly realised her only option to keep her sanity was to co-sleep with the infant.
Sienna was born with silent reflux and she did, and still does, wake up multiple times every night.
Ms Ford said before having Sienna she knew nothing about co-sleeping except that it was frowned upon by a lot of people.
After what she described as a “horrible” experience at a Queensland sleep-training school, she turned to social media for advice and was pointed to The Beyond Sleep Training Facebook group.
For mothers like Ms Ford, the page has been a way to not only learn about co-sleeping but to learn about how to do it safely.
“I have had huge amounts of judgement regarding co-sleeping,” she said.
“From health professionals to family members to friends and even new mums that I meet.
“People’s go-to is that it’s dangerous and that it’s creating a bad habit and that it’s ultimately damaging your relationship with your partner or husband.”
Education is vital
With a growing online community who are co-sleeping with their children, academic research is becoming more and more important.
University of the Sunshine Coast midwifery professor, Jeanine Young, has been working in the area of sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) and infancy care for about 25 years.
She said co-sleeping was much more common in non-westernised countries.
“Western industrialised societies are the only societies where we expect infants to sleep through the night and in a separate environment,” Professor Young said.
“Ninety per cent of the world’s population currently share sleep.”
Professor Young said education was vitally important for any parents considering co-sleeping — just as cot safety was vitally important for parents who did not co-sleep.
Queensland Health and SIDS and Kids recommends the “safest place” for a baby to sleep is a cot beside their parents’ bed for six to 12 months, however they do provide guidelines for parents who do choose to co-sleep.
They include baby sleeping only on their back, ensuring the mattress is firm and flat, ensuring bedding cannot cover the baby or overheat it, sleeping the baby beside one parent not between two, and potentially using an infant sleeping bag.
Professor Young said while Facebook groups did have dangers, as long as facilitators were articulate and evidence-based, they opened a community for struggling parents.
“I’m so glad those peer-support networks are there, because they make such a difference to so many people,” she said.
Topics: regional, infant-health, family, academic-research, parenting, mount-isa-4825