Authors: Trina C Salm Ward
Publish Date: 2014/07/02
Volume: 19, Issue: 3, Pages: 675-690
Abstract
Mother–infant bedsharing has been a common practice for centuries Understanding the reasons parents choose to bedshare can help tailor safe sleep education The purpose of this article was to systematically review the international literature on 1 reasons parents bedshare 2 the cultural context of bedsharing and 3 implications for interventions and future research The search occurred August–September 2013 via PubMed CINAHL and Psyc INFO using the terms “infant” “sleep” “bed shar” “co sleep” “sleep location” “sleep practices” and “sleep arrangements” alone or in combination Google Scholar was searched using “bed share” “bed sharing” “co sleep” and “co sleeping” Inclusion criteria were 1 referenced bedsharing with infants 12 months or younger 2 provided reasons for bedsharing and 3 published between 1990 and 2013 Studies were excluded if they focused on disorders such as epilepsy breathing disorders or among multigestational infants Narrative synthesis was used to summarize findings Thirtyfour studies met inclusion criteria The main themes around bedsharing based on this synthesis included 1 breastfeeding 2 comforting 3 better/more sleep 4 monitoring 5 bonding/attachment 6 environmental 7 crying 8 tradition 9 disagree with danger and 10 maternal instinct Findings suggest that future research should examine parents’ decisionmaking process on infant sleep location including how they weigh personal reasons and sources of advice Public health interventions should incorporate the particular reasons of the population they are targeting Clinicians should discuss infant sleep environment with each family along with their motivations for choosing this environment and work within that framework to address the safety of the sleep environmentThe author thanks the reviewers of a previous submission of this work whose thorough feedback resulted in a much more rigorous manuscript and thanks Prashikshya Karki BSW MA Graduate Assistant and MSW MPH student at the University of Georgia for her effort in obtaining and organizing articles
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