More often then not, it is absolutely wonderful to snuggle to sleep with your child: sharing your bed won’t last forever, so why not embrace him or her and enjoy? Well, at least with younger ones, one must be VERY careful of suffocation risks, as a recent study warns today:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rates of sudden infant death from suffocation or strangulation have quadrupled in the past 20 years in the United States, most apparently from parents sleeping with their babies, government researchers reported on Monday.

Black male babies are the most affected but it is not clear why, the researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The trend is clear despite successful campaigns to prevent sudden infant death syndrome by putting babies to sleep on their backs instead of their tummies, the CDC reports in the journal Pediatrics.

“Infant mortality rates attributable to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed have quadrupled since 1984. Most of the deaths that could be determined were by “overlay” — the parent rolling over onto the child. Prevention efforts should target those at highest risk and focus on helping parents and caregivers provide safer sleep environments. “The study’s evidence shows that babies should be laid to sleep alone, on a flat mattress, with no loose pillows or blankets and in a crib with bars designed to prevent entrapment.”

I would argue that we mostly know our sleep habits, how actively we move, etc. and should have a built-in awareness of the child sharing our bed, even when asleep. Is joint sleeping a [calculated] risk [!?] worth taking?

From the moment each of my two boys were born, I found myself in love with their nails and tiny fingers as well as the rest of them. These days, when my younger 3-year-old allows me to hold his hand in mine for any length of time, I remain mesmerized by his fingers: how skin reveals hard works or not, manual versus servant labor, where these hands have been and how often they have dried up, gotten wet, experienced lifting, squishing, grasping…

I hold my young one’s hand, admiring his chubby, less-experienced joints, and can almost imagine the work awaiting them.

Wonderful digits; glorious growth indexes!

And it always helps to remember the anonymous saying “When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you.”