When you’re a parent, you get all sorts of advice from pretty much everyone and  on pretty much everything.

From what your baby should  wear, to what they should eat, to how you should talk to them,  bathe them, or change them. And one of the biggest things that  everyone says to avoid is co-sleeping, or letting the baby sleep in  the same bed as their parents.

But the science says that it may not  be as outright hazardous as we thought. And it may even have some benefits. [♪ INTRO] In 1994, the National  Institutes of Health in the US launched the Back to Sleep campaign,  which they now call Safe to Sleep. The campaign originally  recommended that babies should only be placed to sleep on their backs.

But as pediatricians did more  research, the NIH started adding more recommendations to their  list, including that no one should be co-sleeping with their babies, ever. Co-sleeping can have slightly different  definitions based on who you’re talking to, but for this video, we just  mean any time you have a baby sharing the same sleeping  surface as a non-baby person. Some researchers also differentiate  co-sleeping and bedsharing, since co-sleeping can include  sleeping right next to each other but on different things, like when baby is right next to the big bed but in their own crib.

Whereas bed sharing specifically  means sleeping on the same surface. While it is somewhat common  in countries around the world, in the US, co-sleeping is, to put  it mildly, strongly discouraged. And the recommendations  against co-sleeping aren’t just from people who want their personal space.

They came from studies that linked  the practice of co-sleeping with SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome. As the name suggests, SIDS is  the blanket term used for babies under a year old dying suddenly. It’s a really sad fact of  life that sometimes babies die with no clear explanation for what happened.

It’s been hypothesized that some  SIDS cases could have medical causes, like undiagnosed neurological conditions. But the whole point is that we just  don’t always know why SIDS happens, which makes it unexpected and  of course, very sad and tragic. In the past, suffocation-related deaths often got lumped in under that SIDS category too.

And in some cases, a SIDS death can  even be caused by a little of both. For instance, some babies have  trouble waking from deep sleep, or have cardiac issues, or have some  neurological issue that makes it hard for them to detect when there’s  too much carbon dioxide in their blood. So if a baby that’s already vulnerable  to dangerously low oxygen levels then also gets wrapped up in  their bedding… you get the idea.

Because of that, some researchers now  use the term SUID, instead of just SIDS. SUID, or Sudden Unexpected Infant  Deaths is the umbrella term that covers SIDS but also  includes all of the infant deaths for which we know the cause  but are still unexpected. So that includes the unexplained reasons,  but also the ones due to stuff like suffocation, where we know what happened,  it just wasn’t anticipated at all.

And it’s not a small number. Stats from 2020 say that of the 3,400  SUIDS deaths in the United States, about a quarter were from suffocation. But some of the talk around the  risks of co-sleeping still frames it as being about SIDS, not suffocation,  which are two different things.

This is kind of a lot to unpack, so we’re  going to do our best to do that for you. Anyway, back to the ‘90s. Research starting during that period found that a big risk factor for SIDS  was the sleeping environment.

For example, babies who slept on  their tummies, on a soft surface, or shared a bed with their parents  had an increased risk of death. One study found that over an 8 year  period, as many as 515 babies died from suffocation or strangulation after sleeping  on adult beds, daybeds or waterbeds. Around 100 of those were directly  caused by the person who was sleeping in the same bed, usually when they accidentally  rolled onto or up against the baby.

Other risks are that they could get  trapped in a gap between cushions, their face could get covered  by a pillow or blanket, or they could roll over face down. And unlike adults, babies literally  can’t get themselves out of those dangerous situations, since they can’t  really, you know, move a whole lot. But there are a lot of other behaviors  that we know are linked with increased risk of suffocation that still  apply whether or not a baby is in the same bed as their parents.

Things like loose bedding,  soft sleep surfaces, pillows, and basically anything that  has the potential to get all wrapped up around a baby’s face. Which is why the other safe sleep  recommendations say to keep sheets and pillows away from the baby and  put them on a single firm surface, to mitigate those suffocation risks. And the thing is, some of those early  co-sleeping studies didn’t take into account those other factors that lead to  suffocation and weigh them all accordingly.

A 2001 study looking at infant mortality  figures from the ‘90s in Alaska found that of 40 co-sleeping related  deaths, only one happened without any other risk factors present, meaning  only one death was actually SIDS. To be clear, some co-sleeping safety risks  include things involving the parents, too. For instance, having parents who smoke,  are intoxicated when going to bed, or who are getting less than four  hours of continuous sleep a night, are all things that increase  the riskiness of co-sleeping.

But other studies have found that  co-sleeping is only linked with infant death if there are other risk factors present too. Which means that at least some  of the fears around co-sleeping may be based on an incomplete  picture of what causes the danger. Thanks to Brilliant for  supporting this SciShow video!

Brilliant is an online learning  platform with thousands of lessons in computer science, math, and science. And its interactive lessons  and problem-solving challenges help you learn a little every day. You can build real-world skills and  knowledge in just a few minutes at a time.

Skills like programming and data analysis. Want to know the secrets behind  how your favorite apps tick? Brilliant has got you covered.

To check them out, head to  Brilliant.org/SciShow or the link in the description down below. That link also gives you 20% off an  annual premium Brilliant subscription. Plus, you’ll get your first 30 days free!

On the flipside, some research suggests that there are potential benefits to co-sleeping, too. First off, it’s comfy. For babies, it’s thought that being  close to their parents lets them hear and feel that heartbeat,  smell the oh-so-cuddly scent and just generally know that  their people are right nearby.

In fact, some researchers think  that co-sleeping may be important on an evolutionary level, and that there  are benefits to a baby’s psychological and social development that come from sleeping  in the same space as other people. Around the world, there are  plenty of cultures that associate sharing a bed with your baby and emotional  wellbeing for everybody involved. And the rate of SIDS in countries where  co-sleeping is more common varies a lot.

SIDS rates are around 0.1 deaths per  1,000 babies in Japan and Sweden, 0.8 in New Zealand, and even  as low as 0.04 in Italy. Another big reason parents choose to  co-sleep is to help with breastfeeding, with parents reporting that it is easier  to feed when the baby is in the same bed. And breastfeeding has a bunch of benefits too, including reducing the overall risk of SIDS.

One review of 11 studies  related to bed sharing and breastfeeding came up with  a whole list of upsides. For starters, there was some  evidence that families who co-slept had longer durations of breastfeeding  throughout the night than families who didn’t, although this effect wasn’t found in all cases. They also found that, on average,  moms who breastfed and co-slept got more sleep than bottle-feeding  moms, which sounds ideal.

And studies done in the UK,  where co-sleeping is more common, found that families who co-slept in  the hospital were more likely to start and continue breastfeeding when they got home. And finally, both parents and  babies might wake up more easily when co-sleeping… which may  be better than it sounds! The idea here is that if anything goes  wrong, both the parents and the baby are more likely to wake up and fix  the problem before it’s too late.

So where does this leave us? Well, there’s still a big  stigma around co-sleeping. Scientific American reported that some  hospitals in the US will not discharge people after they give birth unless they  sign forms promising not to bed share.

But, some other international ministries  of health and pediatric associations are starting to offer guidance  on how to bed-share safely, instead of just saying never  do it and leaving it there. Safer bedsharing guidance matters since  a lot of people end up bed sharing even when they didn’t plan to, because  that’s what works for their baby. So it can be better to tell  people how to do it safely than just saying do not ever do it.

The guidance includes not having  pillows or blankets near the baby, moving the mattress to the  floor to reduce fall risks, placing the baby on their back, and ensuring that the sleep environment is smoke free. Of course, where you sleep matters, too. These guidelines apply to people  sharing a firm mattress with their baby, not sleeping in an armchair or on a couch.

There are also a whole bunch of  other guidelines and recommendations that we don’t have time to get into, but  you can easily google them on your own. The big takeaway here is that there’s  no one perfect way for babies to sleep. But there are safe and unsafe ways  to do all of the sleep methods, whether that’s a bassinet,  a crib, or in the big bed.

We hope that this helps all you parents  out there sleep a little easier at night, whether your baby is next to you in bed or not. [♪ OUTRO]