.
Babies
should sleep in their mother’s bed until they are at least three years old, it
was claimed last night. The
controversial advice comes from a paediatrician who found that two-day-old
babies who were placed in cots slept less well than those who dozed on their
mother’s chest.
Their
hearts were also under more stress, it was claimed.
Sleeping
alone makes it harder for mother and child to bond - and damages the development
of the brain, leading to bad behaviour as the child grows up, researchers fear.
Dr Nils
Bergman, of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, says that for optimal
development, healthy newborns should sleep on their mother’s chest for the
first few weeks
After that,
they should stay in the mother’s bed until they are three or even four years
old.
Being in a cot also disrupted sleep, with the babies’ brains less likely to ‘cycle’ or make the transition between two types of sleep called active and quiet.
In the cots, only six out of the 16 had any quiet sleep and its quality was far worse.
Making this transition is thought to be key to the normal development of the brain.
Animal studies have linked the combination of stress and lack of sleep to behavioural problems in teenage years.
Dr Bergman said that changes to the brain brought on by stress hormones may make it more difficult to form relationships later on, leading to problems such as promiscuity.
The National Childbirth Trust is in favour of bed-sharing, as long as the parents have not been smoking, drinking or using drugs and are not obese, ill or excessively tired.
Professor George Haycock of the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, said: ‘Our position as a foundation is that we owe it to the public to recommend that the safest place is in a cot in the parents’ room
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