A reader writes:
This likely will not be the only email you get on this subject, but I thought a bit of background on that
majority areas of Milwaukee have been hit by something of an epidemic in the last few years of babies dying from unsafe sleeping. There have already been ten deaths just in 2011. Most of the time, the deaths are the result of babies being put to sleep on couches or in big beds surrounded by pillows. Occasionally there is a crushing death due to an adult co-sleeping. All of these deaths are completely preventable, and yet they seem to continue.
Is that ad creepy and shocking? Yes, but it is by design. The public health community in Milwaukee is desperate to stem the tide (including my wife who is a pediatrician serving the affected population). If this ad gets these young moms to think twice, it's worth a bit of creepiness.
A Milwaukee resident writes:
The mortality rate of black babies is at 14.1 for every 1,000 (compared to 5.4 for white babies) in Milwaukee. Co-sleeping deaths are a part of that statistic, so yeah, people need to be scared into not sleeping with their babies. Yes, the execution could have been better, but the people behind the campaign had their hearts in the right place. Infant mortality is at a crisis point in our city, and it's an issue that shouldn't be glibly dismissed as Copyranter did with their line of "…they die doing almost anything at that age!"
Barbara J King recently researched the arguments for and against co-sleeping:
The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) … advises that infants should always sleep on their backs and on a firm surface, and on the issue of co-sleeping, recommends that "the baby should sleep in the same room as the parents, but not in the same bed (room-sharing without bed-sharing)." The idea is that room-sharing embraces the benefit of close monitoring of the baby but avoids any risk of a parent inadvertently rolling over on the child. …
In a peer-reviewed article co-authored with Thomas McDade, McKenna describes research that includes videotape analysis of mother-infant pairs in his sleep lab. Because babies' brains at birth are neurologically immature, episodes of mutual arousal between mom and baby through the night can help regularize the infant's respiration. Some studies suggest that the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) may be reduced by bed-sharing, though the debate on that point is ongoing.
The Dish 