# co-sleeping & smokers?



## KayBea

this has come from another thread 'how do you co-sleep'

first off sorry to that poster for stealing your thread but im starting this one to hopefully get some answers! :thumbup:

every single website, book etc i have read says do not co-sleep if you or OH smoke, even if you dont smoke in the house or the bedroom, bed etc.... but they never explain why. :shrug:

so my question is why do they say this?

i have looked on google for answers but no one seems to have any. someone said on the other thread that her MW/HW mentioned about carbon monoxide but she did a test and it came back as zero... so none was present. :dohh:

theres about 3 of us looking for the answer as to WHY you cant co-sleep if you smoke or have smoked..

does anyone know why?
i will be asking my HV next Tuesday when i take LO to be weighed so i will post back if i get an answer.

thanks
xx
:flower::thumbup:


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## anna matronic

I thought it was the toxins can be on hair/skin/breath which could be a danger to a baby in the bed x


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## lindseymw

I found this, not sure if it's actual fact:-

According to Dr. William Sears, author of "SIDS: A Parent's Guide to Understanding and Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome", "mothers who smoke have lower levels of prolactin, the hormone that regulates milk production and affects mothering behavior."** He goes on to say: "Diminished maternal awareness of an infant's needs has been implicated as a risk factor of SIDS, and a mother with less prolactin going through her may have less awareness of her infant, an especially worrisome situation when one considers that these infants are already compromised due to their exposure to smoke and nicotine." and nicotine."


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## shiner

A lot of it is a statistical correlation found when looking at the caretakers of SIDS victims. There is a higher risk for children who's parents smoke. Then, there is also the problem of smoking lowering your blood oxygen levels which in turn decreses brain activity and can lesses your own ability to easily wake from sleep if your baby is in distress.


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## binxyboo

From the British Medical Journal



> *Effect of parental smoking on cotinine levels in newborns*
> 
> *Background:* Smoking is a major risk factor for cot death. Many infants smoke passively as a result of parental smoking. This paper reports on infants exposed to a smoking environment and how they accumulate metabolites of cigarette smoke, such as cotinine, which may be physiologically harmful.
> 
> *Aim:* To assess cotinine levels in infants of smoking parents.
> 
> *Method:* Cotinine excretion in urine was assessed in 104 infants, of whom 71 had smoking parents and 33 had non-smoking parents. All cotinine levels were measured at approximately 12 weeks of age. The subjects were selected from a database of infants in developmental physiological studies which assessed the impact of various factors on early postnatal development.
> 
> *Results:* On average babies with at least one parent who was a current cigarette smoker excreted 5.58 (95% CI 3.4 to 9.5) times as much cotinine in the urine as did the babies of non-smoking parents. Maternal smoking was the largest contributing factor. Co-sleeping (p&#8202;=&#8202;0.037) and the minimum room temperature (p&#8202;=&#8202;0.028) were significant contributory factors.
> 
> *Conclusion:* Infants from smoking households accumulate cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, which may have a detrimental effect on the cardiorespiratory system.


https://fn.bmjjournals.com/content/92/6/F484.abstract


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## Cattia

I thought it was to do with the fact that as the above poster said, exposure to cigarette smoke can in rare cases affect the baby's arousal behaviour which is thought to be a cause of SIDS. I read somewhere that every hour that a baby spends being exposed to cigarette smoke basically doubles the risk of SIDS so I suppose because of the fact that smoke lingers on the skin, hair, clothes etc maybe that is why?


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## moomin_troll

i co slept with zane and my oh was a smoker. he wasnt allowed to have a fag after he came home from work which was around 5.30 and he had to have a shower before bed.
thats how i delt with it seen as my oh wouldnt quit


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## KayBea

moomin_troll said:


> i co slept with zane and my oh was a smoker. he wasnt allowed to have a fag after he came home from work which was around 5.30 and he had to have a shower before bed.
> thats how i delt with it seen as my oh wouldnt quit


i stupidy started smoking again after i gave birth.. im only on 2 a day. i have one at 6am or when i get up, and at 3 am after lunch. then i shower every night & put clean pyjamas on every night...

OH smokes but i put LO on my side of the bed she isnt any where near OH...

but TBH she gets in bed with us at 6am and 90% of the time i get up anyway or just read in bed as by the time ive fed her im wide awake but she goes back to sleep, then OH gets up at 7am for work.

it just made me wonder as everywhere says dont do it but doesnt explain their reasons iykwim?


xx


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## moomin_troll

KayBea said:


> moomin_troll said:
> 
> 
> i co slept with zane and my oh was a smoker. he wasnt allowed to have a fag after he came home from work which was around 5.30 and he had to have a shower before bed.
> thats how i delt with it seen as my oh wouldnt quit
> 
> 
> i stupidy started smoking again after i gave birth.. im only on 2 a day. i have one at 6am or when i get up, and at 3 am after lunch. then i shower every night & put clean pyjamas on every night...
> 
> OH smokes but i put LO on my side of the bed she isnt any where near OH...
> 
> but TBH she gets in bed with us at 6am and 90% of the time i get up anyway or just read in bed as by the time ive fed her im wide awake but she goes back to sleep, then OH gets up at 7am for work.
> 
> it just made me wonder as everywhere says dont do it but doesnt explain their reasons iykwim?
> 
> 
> xxClick to expand...

i think if ur only having those 2 a day u can give them up. obviously its better to not smoke at all because even if u smoke outside ur baby is still breathing it in from ur hair, skin and clothes when u go back in.
im a ex smoker myself.


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## brunette&bubs

um, probably because of second hand smoke and not only does it affect YOUR health but it affects your baby's health.
IMO, smokers should really try their hardest to quit once they have a baby because you are basically inadvertently exposing an innocent baby to harmful toxins.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the reason seems kind of obvious to me.
I have no tolerance for smokers as I lost several relatives due to lung cancer from cigarette use


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## charlotte-xo

Its because of the toxins you are breathing out onto your baby, even if your a light smoker, smoke clings to your hair and skin for hours after having a fag. 

<3


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## Bexivillian

We used to co-sleep and my partner is a smoker, he had to brush his teeth and wash before coming to bed.


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## Foogirl

Setting aside the SIDS risk from secon hand smoke, I always understood the reason smokers shouldn't co-sleep is because of the effect smoking has on your sleep behaviour, similar to alcohol and other drugs. These all lead to heavier bouts of sleeping so are more likely to roll and potentially smother a baby.

I'm sure I remember reading that somewhere.


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## Whisper

Your body will excrete toxins from the cigarettes regardless of whether or not you shower, the toxins are in your blood stream. Showering is a good idea but even still the toxins are in your body the only way to eliminate the risk is to not smoke.


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## flumpsmummy

im stalking this thread, its very intersting to see other people opinions.xx


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## Gen79

This is what I found:
https://www.parentingscience.com/bed-sharing.html



> Smoking and the risk of SIDS
> There is something about smoking that makes bed sharing very dangerous. Studies suggest that the odds of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, are 16 times greater if babies who bed-share are also exposed to second-hand smoke. This pertains to both prenatal exposure--i.e., babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy--and to postnatal exposure to household smoke (Horsley et al 2007).
> Why the link? That&#8217;s not yet clear. Research suggests that babies who are exposed to smoke have more difficulty arousing from sleep, perhaps because smoke exposure changes the serotonin pathways of the brain (Kinney 2009). And when babies having difficulty arousing, they are at increased risk for SIDS.
> 
> But regardless of the mechanism, there is a consensus that smokers shouldn&#8217;t bed share, and that smoking can explain much of the elevated SIDS risk associated with bed sharing. In some studies, the risk of bed sharing became statistically insignificant after researchers controlled for maternal smoking (e.g., Scragg et al 1993; Blair et al 1999; McGarvey et al 2003).


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## My_First

The interesting thing is with all of the SIDS statistics is that no one really knows. SIDS has a greater risk if the partner is in a manual labour job, could that mean, and I know this is a sweeping generalisation, that those in a manual labour job are more likely to smoke? In addition, SIDS cases are higher in the North, again could it be there is more manufacturing i.e. manual labour jobs, ergo smokers?

With SIDS everyone is clutching at straws, unfortunatly, as there are so few cases a year, (just over 300 in 2008), and so finding a correlation is difficult. 

There is another school of thought that actually believes that there could be underl;ying medical problems, which were never found, which attributes to the unfortunate deaths.


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## pinklightbulb

I co-slept and I smoke. OH smokes as well. We both showered before bed and all of that. I knew it wasn't advised, but I had a baby who refused to settle in his cot, and one night in desperation just brought him into bed with me. He slept like a dream. From then on I continued to co-sleep with him but was always paranoid over it.
I also BF and smoked and followed all the guidelines for that as well. I never smoked before feeding. I looked into FF before I had him because I smoke, and I also smoked lightly through pregnancy. (Here is where I usually get jumped on.)
Before anyone says anything, YES I beat myself up every.single.day about it, I just had to go to a funeral today for my LO's little friend born only a couple of months after him whose mother did everything by the book but lost her little boy to cancer just short of his 1st birthday last week-- did I feel guilty sitting there at the service thinking of what I did during pregnancy? YES. More than words can say. But I am just grateful now that my little boy is alive despite my stupidity. So grateful there are no words. Nobody can make me feel any guiltier about it. You can try and I will agree with you that I deserve it, no questions asked, but thought I would say so beforehand to get it out of the way if I am jumped on.
When I looked up BF and smoking vs FF, all the research indicated that BF was still better or I would have FF without a doubt. I know I probably took a risk co-sleeping but thought I might minimize it showering and following what guidelines there are for that situation. Thankfully, my little boy is OK. Would I do it again (co-sleeping as a smoker)? Yes, I probably would, given LO is all right, if the next one is also a bad settler.


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