Safe Co-Sleeping – Notes from Sleep Expert, Dr. James McKenna

• Breastfeeding significantly helps to protect infants from death including deaths from SIDS/SUDI and from secondary disease and/or congenital conditions.
• Infants should sleep on their backs, on firm surfaces, on clean surfaces, in the absence of smoke, under light (comfortable) blanketing, and their heads should never be covered.
• The bed should not have any stuffed animals or pillows around the infant and never should an infant be placed to sleep on top of a pillow.
• Sheepskins or other fluffy material and especially bean bag mattresses should never be used.
• No water beds.
• Infants should never sleep on couches or sofas – with or without adults.
• Bottle-feeding babies should always sleep alongside the mother on a separate surface rather than in the bed.
• Both parents should agree and feel comfortable with the decision. Each bed-sharer should agree that he or she is equally responsible for the infant and acknowledge that the infant is present.
• Both parents should think of themselves as primary caregivers.
• Infants a year or less should not sleep with other children siblings.
• Persons on sedatives, medications or drugs, or who are intoxicated or excessively unable to arouse should not co-sleep on the same surface with the infant.
• Extremely obese persons, who may not feel exactly where or how close their infant is, may wish to have the infant sleep alongside but on a different surface.