Bed-sharing is a risk for sudden unexpected death in infancy.

Bed-sharing refers to a baby and adult (usually mother) sleeping together on the same sleep surface (usually a bed) for some or all sleeps. Previous Scottish Government Reduce the Risk of Cot death advice, endorsed by the Scottish Cot Death Trust and Unicef, included: “The safest place for your baby to sleep at night, during the first six months, is on their back in a cot in your room.” Figure 1A illustrates the cot where the baby should sleep after a feed or cuddle. Figure 1 Feeding your baby in bed (A) with a cot next to bed (B) with no cot next to bed. The Scottish Government is now issuing the Lullaby Trust’s Safer Sleep-Saving Babies Lives leaflets for professionals (https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Safer-sleep-saving-lives-a-guide-for-professionals-web.pdf) and parents (https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Safer-sleep-for-babies-a-guide-for-parents-web.pdf) endorsed by Public Health England, which use clipart similar to figure 1B with no infant cot to indicate the safest place for your baby to sleep after a feed or cuddle. The Scottish Government now recommends avoidance of bed-sharing only if additional hazards are present such as parental smoking, alcohol or drug use or sleeping on a sofa. We believe this written literature—without spelling out inherent risk of bed-sharing for sleep and only recommending against bed-sharing if additional hazards are present—in conjunction with figure 1B with no infant cot to indicate the safest place for your baby to sleep, will encourage more parents to share their adult bed with their young baby and lead to many otherwise avoidable infant deaths. Bed-sharing is associated with sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI). SUDI includes SIDS (also known as cot death) (International Classification of Diseases ICD-10 …