The newborn sleep stages are beyond exhausting; they’re utterly sanity-destroying.
Plopping the baby in a crib, for many parents, is a guarantee that there will be no sleep for anyone. Then our doctors tell us horror stories of what we can expect if we take the baby into the bed with his parents.
Drained and sleep-deprived parents find themselves struggling for an answer.
Parents Share Horror Stories Of Babies Taken Away (Or Threats Of Removal) Over Sleeping Arrangements
They can be found on parenting forums, on Reddit’s various subreddits devoted to legal advice and family law, in Facebook groups, and often with blogs, op-eds, or GoFundMe pages.
They’re parents, usually moms, who say their children were removed unjustly by Child Protective Services over causes that seem downright unjustifiable, such as religious or political views, or when a chronic medical condition was wrongly deemed to be a sign of abuse before it was correctly diagnosed. One particular fear, though, is the removal of co-sleeping.
Some parents say that their child was removed from their home because they co-sleep rather than placing the infant in a separate sleeping space, and this has terrified other parents into lying about the sleeping arrangements in their own homes.
Have Removals Really Happened Over Mere Co-Sleeping?
Of course, when these parents share their experiences, we can only hear one side. CPS isn’t popping in on a parenting or legal advice forum to contradict a (usually anonymous) poster and list any other issues that may have been present. Still, there’s always pushback from people who insist this can’t be the whole story.
Some CPS workers have openly denied that this ever happens. For instance, in 2014, Julie Ahnen, in Wisconsin, wrote to Cap Times to complain about a previous column in which others had alleged babies were removed from homes over co-sleeping. She assured readers this doesn’t happen in her county. She wrote:
“As the manager of Child Protective Services for Dane County, I take issue with the statement that ‘“’in Dane County, infants can be removed from homes where safe-sleep guidelines are disobeyed.’”’ This statement misrepresents the work of CPS and creates unwarranted fear within the community. Social workers are committed to preserving families whenever safely possible. We believe that children achieve the best life outcomes when raised in strong, healthy families of origin. When we make the difficult decision to remove children from their home, it is because of parenting behaviors, attitudes, and/or household conditions that are out of control and have led to a situation that is immediately and observably unsafe to a child.”
Her letter, though, does highlight one problem: each county in the U.S. (over three thousand of them) handles its own Child Protective Services or equivalent agency, and while each operates under mostly similar rules, each office and each individual will have their own views and concerns.
What About Threats Of Removal Or Worse?
Many more parents say they’ve had workers threaten to remove their children. This would be even harder to disprove since the alleged threats occur inside the house, not publicly, and likely don’t make it to a courtroom. However, they can leave parents in fear for their children and the sanctity of their family.
Other parents deccribe pediatricians speaking about co-sleeping as a form of neglect, warning that if they continue to choose to do so, they’ll wake to a dead baby. Sometimes, parents say they’ve been warned that there will be a call to CPS if they don’t agree to stop.
And one parent, Erin Piche-Pitts, was even convicted of aggravated manslaughter in 2018. However, the circumstances were more extreme: this was the second time an infant had died while allegedly co-sleeping with her, and she had been warned about the risks of taking another baby into her bed, according to The Ledger.
This All Adds Up To Terrified Parents
Whether parents have anything to fear from overzealous protectors of child safety or not, they are indeed afraid.
One mom shared her experience, prepping to do all the right things when it came to her baby’s sleep, purchasing a (AAP-approved) co-sleeper and a crib, and exhausting herself with the routine of nursing the baby to sleep and placing him in the bed only for him to immediately awake and cry, and starting over until she was so drained she fell asleep in the chair with him. In a piece in HuffPost, she wrote:
“One night, my wife entered the nursery when I didn’t come back to bed and found the baby sleeping against my thigh. He had slid all the way down there in his sleep, and in mine.”
So, she did what so many moms have done: she learned about the safest ways to co-sleep, she took the baby into her bed, she nursed him (and herself) to sleep, and then she lied about it to her pediatrician. In fact, another mom turned to Reddit to discuss the same lie and why she does it, and invite others to share their stories. She wrote:
“When I was a new mom back in 2009, I was honest the first time I was asked ‘where does baby sleep?’ The nurse ripped me up one side and down the other, and assured me that I’d most certainly kill her if I continued. From there on, I never answered the question honestly.”
Others chimed in, saying that they, too, lie or misdirect when asked the question. They describe saying, “She has a crib,” when that’s technically true but the baby doesn’t actually sleep in it, or saying “in her bed” without mentioning that the baby’s bed is also mom’s bed.
Many cited their fear that the doctor would either dump them as patients, berate them, or report them to CPS.
The Risk Factors For SIDS Are A Bit More Complicated Than Merely Co-Sleeping
A 1999 study sought to find risk factors that could reduce the danger of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, with the Back To Sleep Campaign (which encourages parents to place sleeping babies in their cribs on their backs) well underway.
The study drew several conclusions, including that sleeping with the baby on a sofa carries a particularly high risk and that there was no increased risk found when the infant was 14 weeks or older and parents did not smoke. Also:
“The risk linked with bed sharing among younger infants seems to be associated with recent parental consumption of alcohol, overcrowded housing conditions, extreme parental tiredness, and the infant being under a duvet”
What Are “The Safe Sleep Seven” Rules?
Co-sleeping advocates have compiled a list of seven rules based on the risk factors. They argue that following these rules allows a mother to safely co-sleep with her infant.
The rules:
- Parents are nonsmokers.
- Mom is sober and unimpaired.
- Baby is breastfed.
- Baby was full-term and is healthy.
- Baby is sleeping on his back.
- Baby is lightly dressed.
- The bed is a safe surface (not too soft, no heavy or tight blankets, no toys, no gaps, etc).
La Leche League asserts that under these circumstances, a baby is no more at risk for SIDS than in his own crib in the same room.
Parents Need More Support, Not More Judgment, From Medical Providers
The American Association of Pediatrics refuses to budge on its recommendation to never co-sleep because it maintains that it is unsafe. However, some doctors, nurses, and CPS workers seem to agree based on parents’ stories.
However, the current messaging seems to be much more effective at convincing parents to lie to their doctors than at convincing them to alter their sleep habits.
If doctors really want to communicate the risks and maintain an open dialogue to keep their youngest patients safe, then the most necessary step isn’t a change in the rules or advice but a change in how it’s presented to parents. Parents need to be assured that they won’t lose their babies for simply making a decision that works for everyone to sleep and that they won’t be berated for telling their doctors the truth about their choices.
These changes could make a difference in the safety of newborns and their parents.
