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City\'s 5th Co-Sleeping Death in 10 Weeks Reported
'); document.write('Mon, 18 May 2009 21:29:00 GMT
'); document.write('Milwaukee authorities are blaming the death of yet another baby on co-sleeping. In 10 weeks, five babies have died during the night while sleeping out of a crib.Meekel McCleave was just two months old when her mother, who had also co-slept with her other children, woke up and found the small newborn face down. Public health officials are once again decrying the practice of co-sleeping, precisely because of outcomes like this.The death of these five babies is a complete tragedy -- sad, heartbreaking and avoidable. But what gets me, an experienced co-sleeper, is that co-sleeping is taking the blame and getting the headlines in these deaths. But a closer look sheds a little more light.In Meekel's case, a medical examiner's report indicates the baby was found face-down on an adult-size...'); document.write('
Miley Cyrus Does It, But Would You Let Your Teen Sleep in Your Bed?
'); document.write('Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:32:00 GMT
'); document.write('Think you've got it bad trying to kick your cosleeping toddler out of your bed? Actress and singer Miley Cyrus recently told Glamour she still likes to crawl into bed with mom and dad on occasion, and she's sixteen. Cyrus told Glamour she sometimes feel immature for her age, and she related that to a desire to sleep with mom and dad, specifically cuddling with her mom, after a long day. I truly can't imagine having crawled into bed with my parents at sixteen. Perhaps it speaks to how much tighter-knit the Cyrus family is; I was your typical teenage girl at odds with her mother and then some. But it sounds like they might be a little too tight-knit. Not in a sexual way. At least, I'm not concerned that there's anything inappropriate between child and parents. I...'); document.write('
Controversy: Extreme Measures
'); document.write('Fri, 02 May 2008 11:31:00 GMT
'); document.write('What does a boy spending a night in foster care because his father gave him a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade have to do with L.A.'s recent labeling of co-sleeping as a "lethal act"? (Besides the fact that both were lambasted by our own Madeline Holler this week, I mean?)Well, does anyone else think that authorities in general have become much more, well, authoritative of late? And by that I mean: more codified, less flexible, more punitive, less sensitive?Readers of these posts were reminded of similarly extreme responses to relatively benign situations. Anisa wrote, "I heard recently of a woman *arrested* for dashing into a convenience store for less than five minutes while her kids were in the car - a suburban area, in cool and comfortable te...'); document.write('
They Say: Co-Sleeping Kills Kids
'); document.write('Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:03:00 GMT
'); document.write('Officials in Los Angeles County are warning parents that co-sleeping is a "potentially lethal act." So are car-riding, grape-eating and breathing the county's lead-rich air, but no mention of those in the same report, which was issued by the Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect. The report claimed that 44 children died from co-sleeping in the county in 2006, a 76 percent increase over the previous year. The defined co-sleeping as the practice of the sleeping in the same bed, couch or chair with an infant.Unfortunately, those statistics don't tell us exactly how many of those deaths were in a couch or chair -- something even ardent supporters of co-sleeping agree is super risky. They also don't tell us how many of those involved a co-sleep...'); document.write('
Co-Sleeping: Is 13 Too Old?
'); document.write('Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:09:00 GMT
'); document.write('I'm admittedly anti-co-sleeping -- not because I think it's not cuddly and bond-forming, but because I usually wake up with a footprint on my forehead or an eye gouged out and lying on the pillow next to me. So whenever I hear about someone co-sleeping with a child, I immediately think: "sucker" and "Hope you have a good helmet!"But when I read this Dear Abby about a dad who co-sleeps with his 13-year-old daughter, I immediately thought: "Well that's just bizarre. For both of them, really."The letter goes that a woman dating "Jim" doesn't like the fact that Jim's daughter, Jenna, sleeps in dad's bed. (Jim is divorced and Jenna also co-sleeps at mom's house.)It gets a little more bizarre actually. Jenna also shares he...'); document.write('