Hours after childbirth, Erin Maher lay in bed at Nassau University Medical Center holding her newborn daughter Samantha close when a nurse asked to take the child to the hospital nursery.
"I just kept her on my chest," Maher said. "They kept trying to take her away but I wasn't being separated."
Since then, Maher, 33, of Farmingdale, has rarely spent a night in a different bed than her now 4-year-old daughter, joining other mothers on Long Island and nationwide who sleep with their infant children -- a practice Maher and others say makes breast-feeding easier, helps them sleep and strengthens the child-mother bond.
But a coalition of government agencies and pediatricians has stepped up recently to warn of bedsharing's risks. Today, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi will join state and Suffolk County social services leaders at a Mineola news conference highlighting dangers they say include accidental suffocation and head injuries from falling.
"Parents are working longer and longer hours, and [co-sleeping] is a way to spend time with their children, but they should be aware of the safety risks," said Suozzi, a father whose three children slept in cribs.
At least 89 infants statewide have died in co-sleeping incidents since 2006, when the state began tracking such deaths, including two in Nassau and at least one in Suffolk, said the state Office of Children and Family Services. Most of them involved young mothers rolling over in bed and unintentionally smothering babies less than a year old.
New York began a $500,000 public awareness campaign in 50 counties this month.
"Children are dying every day needlessly," said Gladys Carrion, New York's commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services. "There is an easy way to prevent that, quite frankly, and that is -- don't co-sleep with your baby."
There are no nationwide statistics on co-sleeping injuries and deaths because not every state tracks the numbers, and the numbers that do exist are likely underreported, officials said.
Nearly 13 percent of infants regularly sleep in the same bed as their parents, and about 50 percent do so occasionally, according to the most recent study, a 2003 paper by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Although the number of affluent women who co-sleep appears to be rising, most who share beds are poor, officials said.
States began warning about bedsharing after a 2005 report from the American Academy of Pediatricians recommended, for the first time, that parents never co-sleep with infants.
"There are just a lot of risks that you can't control as easily as you do in a crib," said Dr. Rachel Moon, a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome researcher at Children's National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C.
Co-sleeping advocates say the concerns are overblown. Mothers who breast feed and co-sleep say they are attuned to their children's every move, waking when they notice changed breathing patterns or unusual movements.
And there are many precautions parents can and do take. Carrion said co-sleeping cribs, which have three walls, the open side directly adjacent to the mother's bed, are a safe alternative, though Moon said there was little research on the devices.
La Leche League, a breast-feeding education group that does not endorse or reject co-sleeping, advises using a firm mattress placed in the center of the bedroom, avoiding heavy bedding that can suffocate a baby, and never co-sleeping after drinking, smoking or when exhausted.
"You have to find something that works for you, even if it means dad on the couch and mom in bed with the baby," said Angela Salas, 25, of Hicksville, a La Leche League teacher.
Bedsharing death statistics often include cases where caretakers and infants slept together on sofas -- universally acknowledged as unsafe -- or cases with mothers under the influence of drugs or alcohol, said University of Notre Dame's James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory in South Bend, Ind.
"Unless practiced dangerously, sleeping next to mother is good for infants," McKenna said.
Maher, who teaches childbirth classes and also has a son, Brandon, 2, said she knew of co-sleeping's risks and never planned on doing it. "I tried to do the 'normal thing,'" she said. "It just didn't feel right." To see more of Newsday, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsday.com Copyright (c) 2008, Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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