Michael Zennie, of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that Indiana DCS is launching a public relations campaign to spread the word that sleeping with an infant isn’t recommended and can lead to the death of the infant.
Medical experts, law enforcement officers and child advocates want to spread the word – sleeping with your baby can be deadly.
Suffocation or other asphyxiation from unsafe sleeping kills more babies in Allen County than any other preventable cause of death – more than car crashes, more than drowning.
I suspect that advocates of the co-sleeping movement won’t appreciate this. I’ve never been a fan of the whole sleeping with your baby thing — probably for selfish reasons. It interferes with my sleep. We went with the Ferber method (i.e. “cry it out”) to get Cole sleeping through the night at about 4 to 5 months. I can’t say it works for every kid — in Harper’s case, I’d say the results have been mixed — but for Cole, the results were dramatically positive. He went from a rarely-sleeping crank, to a champion sleeper and one of the sweetest kids around. (Not that I’m biased or anything).
As for the PR campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DCS has their facts right on this one, but they also wouldn’t be the first government agency to jump into a hyperbolic ad campaign based on incomplete data.
Update The Indiana Law Blog noted a case that is on topic which is slated for oral argument before the Indiana Court of Appeals:
Alisha Harradon & William Kenneth Jones, Jr. vs. Kathy & Keith Schlamadinger – Alisha Harradon and William Jones, Jr. (collectively “the Parents”) filed a complaint in Starke Circuit Court against Keith and Kathy Schlamadinger (collectively “the Schlamadingers”) alleging that the Schlamadingers’ negligence proximately caused the death of the Parents child. The Parents were overnight guests in the Schlamadingers’home, and they allege that the Schlamadingers did not provide an adequate place for the Parents’ three-month-old child to sleep. The child suffocated during the night while sleeping on the couch with his mother. The Schlamadingers filed a motion for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. The Parents appeal and argue that the Schlamadingers owed a duty to the child, and there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Schlamadingers breached that duty.
What a horrible situation.
Just wanted to remark that I’ve seen the public service ad for this and it’s very effective. So much so that I, with my limited attention span, remember it. The spot is shot completely from a camera view as the “father/husband is video recording his wife/mother sleeping on the couch with the baby. He makes some noice to wake both up and a happy moment quickly falls apart as the mother is unable to wake the child and yells to call 911 and the camera is dropped as the father makes the call. Chilling and very effective.
Well, I read about one father in the UK who rolled over and suffocated his kid doing this, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
Kids needs to be weaned. There’re kids going to school in the UK who are wearing nappies (diapers) because they’re still not potty-trained.
Ok… just have to gripe about the lawsuit. Umm… if you feel your child is in an unsafe situation to you a) say “oh well, it’s on you if anything goes horribly wrong; or do you b) get your child out of the unsafe situation.
Really?