Is There a Risk of Sudden Parent Death Syndrome?

"Bedsharing is a risk for cot death." So says the Guardian, quoting the British Department of Health.

Why would you put a baby in a cot? Apparently, in the UK, land of lorries and mums, "cot" means "crib." In the United States, where we supposedly speak a very similar language, a cot is one of those narrow flat raised bed contraptions you sleep on in an Army tent, so "cot death" to me would mean that some corporal rolled over onto his bayonet during a bad dream.

But anyway. This is another article that dispenses advice (sharing a bed with your baby is bad) that contradicts itself later (the data isn't necessarily accurate) and then comes back around again (but you shouldn't share a bed with your baby anyway.)

In my experience, I was worried about rolling over onto my kids when they were so small, but for the first couple of months of Sasha's life, she slept on my chest on the sofa — which the article says is even WORSE than a bed — but I was able to lay still enough and in a position so neither of us moved. The worst part was waking for a feeding and finding my chest all sweaty from having an 8-to-12-pound burrito on top of me.

The article doesn't address the real problem, SIDS risk aside, when the kids are older, like 3 and 5, and they both want to share your bed (the ironic [?] thing is that the one time we actually had a bedsharing problem was shortly before Jackson's 5th birthday, when he came into our bed and I moved to the couch and he accidentally rolled off the bed in the early morning, requiring an ambulance trip to the hospital as a precaution — good times!), so the article was actually a complete waste of time.

On the other hand, the article didn't say "mum" even once.

(The person responsible for that Anne-Geddes-in-hell cake can be found here.)
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