Co-sleeping, is it good to sleep with the baby?
Co-sleeping is a little-known practice in Western society, although little by little it begins to talk more about it, as well as to value the benefits it entails for the baby. We call co-sleeping share the bed with the baby regularly (or use a co-sleeping cot, which is attached to the parent's bed), during part of the night or all of it.
That a mother and her infant baby sleep together is the most universal and ancient nocturnal strategy of humanity. It is an innate behavior of our species, probably designed by nature to achieve maximum survival and welfare of our offspring.
In fact, only in a few cultures (so-called Western or industrialized) do babies sleep completely apart from their mothers. In the rest of the world, co-sleeping is usual.
Modern societies and cohabitation
Throughout history, infant mortality has always been high. Babies died in many ways and in many places, including in the parents' bed. Although it was known that influences such as alcohol, in some societies was attributed to the crushing by the mother and began to use cradles for the baby to sleep near, but not with, the mother.
With the emergence of Public Health and the development of modern medicine, infant mortality decreased drastically; This coincided in the West with the increase in prosperity and the size of the houses (including a separate room for the baby), as well as with the appearance of the commercial formula to feed the babies. However, in the mid-twentieth century there was an authentic epidemic of unexplained infant deaths (called "sudden infant death" (MSL) or "cradle death") * despite the fact that the babies were far from the "danger" that was supposed sleep with their mothers.
Now we know the factors of this western tragedy: mothers who smoke during and after pregnancy, babies lying face down, artificial feeding with a bottle Y baby very far from his mother, which therefore can not detect changes in your baby's breathing or temperature. Knowing these factors we can intervene to modify them.
There are two major movements that deal with the theme "where the baby has to sleep": the movement for the safety and prevention of infant death, and the movement to promote breastfeeding, the bond and the optimal mental development of the baby. Both seek the best for the baby, but due to various controversies sometimes seem contrary. We are going to try to unravel where we are.
Is it good to sleep with the baby?
The baby's brain when it is born is only 25% of its potential. The human baby waits and needs intimate and frequent physical contact, mainly with his mother. It needs it to feed itself and for a suitable maturation of its immune, thermoregulatory and cardiorespiratory systems. In fact, the baby is designed to function optimally in the context of a close relationship in which the breastfeeding mother It can compensate your neuroimmunological vulnerability. His breathing is matched with that of his mother and both sleep more lightly (therefore the baby will not fall into an excessively deep sleep that can cause difficulties to his immature brain, and the mother will be more attentive to any sign of danger in the).
Sharing the bed with the baby helps the mothers to breastfeed more times and for longer. In the same way, breastfeeding mothers tend to sleep with their babies. Both behaviors are associated. In other words, yes, it is good for the baby to sleep very close to the mother already in the same bed or in a co-sleeping bed.
When he sleeps with me he wakes up more times
The notion that sleeping "in one go" (continuously and interrupted throughout the night) is good for a baby is false. This widespread notion explains why so many babies apparently have sleep problems. Babies have no sleep problems, we have their parents because of a cultural model that creates false expectations and that has nothing to do with a baby's physiological (ie, normal) sleep pattern.
Frequent breastfeeding and interaction with the mother, also nocturnal, are necessary for optimal brain development. If we explain to everyone that the normal, the good (since it is how it is designed) is that the baby wakes up and often breastfeed during the night, at least his first year of life, we would not think that our child has something wrong when he behaves like this. The original design of the human being does not contemplate that it is fed with formula or that it sleeps face down separately from its mother or that it does not respond to her crying. Children raised with formula sleep more hours in a row, but they are precisely less healthy and have more risk of MSL.
Carmela Baeza Family doctor. Sexologist Raices Family Care Center.
www.centroraices.com
