Sunday October 16, 2005
A rather interesting little tidbit I discovered about the new SIDs guidelines I talked about on my Oct. 11 blog post. Let’s take a minute to see who sponsored the study, as stated on their website Notice, all of these companies have a vested interest in promoting pacifiers and crib sleeping.
Among the top Corporate sponsors ($100K and above)
- Halo, (makes crib mattresses, crib accessories, crib bedding & crib sleep sacks)
- Gerber (makes pacifiers & crib bedding)
- Ross (formula manufacturer, so no scruples about encouraging pacifier usage…interferes with breastfeeding).
Other Corporate sponsors:
- Walmart foundation
- Babies R Us (sells cribs & pacifiers)
- Baby Depot at Burlington Coat Factory (again, sells cribs & pacifiers)
- Kiddopotamus & Co (sells sleep sacks for crib sleeping babies)
- Tiny Love/The Maya Group (sells crib mobiles)
Dr. Sears speaks out
Dr. William Sears, MD (author of a large number of Parenting books), Speaks out against the new AAP policy of co-sleeping.
- Back sleeping is the safest, and we agree
- We don’t recommend breastfed babies use a pacifier
- What the AAP continues to ignore, however, is the fact that virtually all of the 2500 cases of SIDS each year in the U.S. occur in cribs.
- co-sleeping is much safer
-
Research around the U.S. has shown that about half of American families co-sleep with their babies. We should focus our efforts on teaching parents to do this safely instead of trying to get them to change their parenting instincts and use a crib.
That was an informative post about the cereal
feebeeglee told me that co-sleeping using an air matress (that is what we have) isn’t a good idea. I was all for it too, but I guess it probably isn’t for us for now, at least, since there isn’t a way right now for us to get even just a matress. I think that if you can do it, it would probably be better, but like I said, it probably wouldn’t be safe for us to do. You are so smart on stuff like this! Someday, perhaps I will be smart like that! Hope you have a good day!
God bless you and yours,
Beth & Baby Sophia
I would agree with Fee that an air mattress is probably not the best idea. We sleep on a conventional matress, with no box spring, directly on the floor. It isn’t as expensive as a normal bed, but has several advantages (one being that I don’t have to worry as much about a baby falling a ways when they start crawling around on the bed).
An air matress is probably not firm/stable enough. (At least the ones we have been on over the years) Futon mattresses might be a more economical option than a conventional mattress, you could look into that. I certainly understand being limited by finances though!
First let me say Thanks! for posting this! I was trying to tell dh about it all but I think I was too angry to be very coherant! Now I can just link him.
The big money companies bite the big one. I was wondering if these guidelines came from something like them and now I see they do. So tell my naive self… what does the AAP *need* the money for?
Okay, we have 3 beds in the house. One is a mattress, kind of more soft than I would want it to be for cosleeping so I sleep with ds in the crook of my arm all night. Luckily he is a still sleeper as dd never was. Dh and dd sleep on a futon mattress that is directly on the floor. It’s queen sized with a wool cover and it was about $300. It’s pretty firm and we like it well enough. We also have a deluxe Aero bed that I have slept with Walter on, it is the firmest bed we have in the house. I guess if it became leaky though it would be really bad as the mattress would form around little baby. We don’t make a habit of sleeping on it. I know there are always mattress for sale very cheap on craigslist.org. I think they are usually from college students who use them a semester or so and then need to move and don’t want to move with a queen size mattress. (At least this was always the case on craigslist boston.)
You’re right on the money with this one. Or should I say the AAP is in on the money?!
Thank you for the Dr. Sears link, although IMO tummy sleeping can be safely done while co-sleeping or are sleeping in an adult bed safely, but I shouldn’t knock Dr. Sears too much huh? 
It’s good that he’s a voice of mainstream dissent in the mainstream media.
So,m you’ve seen the list of all of the AAP sponsors right? And you’re saying these specific companies sponsored this specific study? Wow, I’m not surprised but I am, kwim? I’m fustrated with coorperate America making money off of our children by scaring us as parents who only want to do what’s right.
I’d also like to add that the SIDS Alliance also has major sponsors in common with the AAP’s nonprofit, the “Friends of Children Fund”: Gerber, Johnson and Johnson, and Proctor and Gamble. It seems likely to me that they commissioned a study that found what they wanted it to find (which is easy to do, based on how you set exclusions and how you interpret the data), sent it along to the AAP for consideration, and then their common sponsors encouraged the AAP to revise the guidelines in light of the new research. If that sounds like a conspiracy theory to you (and by “you” I mean “anyone”, not Jennifer Z specifically), then you haven’t done enough research on just how much lobbying goes on at the AAP. For just one example, check out the Breastfeeding Campaign scandal – a good article is here: http://www.hipmama.com/node/588.
But the AAP guidelines were based on several studies. You haven’t said which of them – if any – you’re trying to claim were funded by this group, but the most recent three studies to show an increased risk with bedsharing weren’t done in America, so presumably they wouldn’t have been.
(I can’t find a place on here to include details. My name is Sarah, my e-mail address is nannyogg@samael.demon.co.uk, and my website is http://www.goodenoughmummy.blogspot.com.)