Family Beds

This BS article is pimping the lies that family beds are dangerous.

For an opinion based on nothing: "And pediatricians say it's a reminder that babies have no business sleeping in beds with adults."

The real cause: "According to a search warrant, the woman uses a couple prescription drugs and she'd been drinking martinis. Police say she blew a 0.12 on a breath test."

The lesson: Don't pass out on top of your baby! That's not an accident, it's negligent.

More meaningless statistics that don't actually support the context: "The most recent numbers, two years ago, show 39 babies died from unsafe sleeping environments in Minnesota." Those 39 deaths-out of approximately 70,000 babies born per year in Minnesota; that's .05%, hardly a statistical worry-include blankets in cribs, babies left to roll off of couches, kids sleeping on floors and being stepped on, and anything else sleep related. Compare that to a rate of 57.1 per 100,000 SIDS deaths in 2002. That's not an apples-to-apples comparison. The rates are from different samples and there is an unknown amount of overlap between the two statistics.

What is clear is that, without a control group-a horrible idea-complaints about family beds are "feel good" complaints not based in reality. There is not a single person railing against family beds who knows how often parents in a family bed have woken up to see a baby having problems that would have gone unnoticed if the baby had been in a crib.

Base your decisions on reality, science and statistics, not the opinions of badly informed control-freaks.