美国国家公共电台 NPR Is Sleeping With Your Baby As Dangerous As Doctors Say?

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

This morning, how to help newborn babies sleep. Turns out, many moms are going against a medical recommendation that's aimed at saving babies' lives. In our new series How to Raise a Human, NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff explores whether it's time for pediatricians to change their advice.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE¹: About six months ago, Melissa Nichols brought her little baby girl home from the hospital to her apartment in San Francisco. She immediately started hiding something.

MELISSA NICHOLS: I felt guilty, and I felt like I didn't want to tell anyone. I just felt like it's - like you're a bad mom or I don't know. The mom guilt², like, starts right away.

DOUCLEFF: Nichols knew what she was doing went against medical advice. And she felt so ashamed about it that she kept it from her pediatricians.

NICHOLS: It's kind of like this weird³ thing that you're like, are they going to ask me about it?

DOUCLEFF: The way Nichols talks, you'd think she's doing something really dangerous with the baby, like drinking and driving. But, no, what Nichols is ashamed of...

NICHOLS: Bed-sharing.

DOUCLEFF: ...Holding her baby while they sleep. The American Academy of Pediatrics says moms should not sleep with their newborns.

NICHOLS: I just, like, couldn't bring myself to, like, put her far away from me.

DOUCLEFF: She tried putting her newborn in the crib, as the doctors told her. But on the first night, it didn't work.

NICHOLS: She was crying and, like, would absolutely not sleep. And I couldn't sleep either.

DOUCLEFF: Because you wanted to touch her and hold her.

NICHOLS: Yeah. And I also just kind of feel instinctually that, like, she should be on me. Like, she's been in me for nine months. And like, this has to be right.

DOUCLEFF: There's no question many moms have an instinct to sleep with their babies. Humans have been sleeping together for hundreds of thousands of years. And James McKenna, an anthropologist⁴ at Notre Dame⁵, says babies also have a lot to say about the matter, too.

JAMES MCKENNA: Human babies are contact seekers. What they want and need the most is their mother and father's bodies. This is what's good for their physiology⁶. This is what their survival depends on.

DOUCLEFF: Today the practice is widespread. Anthropologists at Yale found that in at least 40 percent of documented cultures, it's a tradition for babies to sleep with their moms. But in the past several decades, there's been a growing concern in Western cultures about whether sleeping in the same bed is safe. Could the mom easily roll over on the baby or could the baby easily move up into the pillows and suffocate⁷? Back in the '90s, McKenna tried to figure out exactly what happens during the night when a mom sleeps with her newborn.

MCKENNA: My laboratory was like an apartment, basically.

DOUCLEFF: He invited dozens of moms and babies to sleep in his lab, hooked them up to all this monitoring equipment and measured...

MCKENNA: Heart rate, breathing patterns, chest movement, body temperature, brain waves.

DOUCLEFF: What McKenna found was remarkable⁸. The mom, when she's breastfeeding, creates this little shell around the baby, almost like an incubator. Inside this shell...

(SOUNDBITE OF HEARTBEAT)

DOUCLEFF: ...The baby hears the mom's heartbeat and in turn, changes her heart rate.

MCKENNA: It's usually slowing.

DOUCLEFF: The baby also hears...

(SOUNDBITE OF BREATHING)

DOUCLEFF: ...The mom breathing, which McKenna says sounds similar to what the baby hears in the womb.

MCKENNA: That contains that shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo (ph).

DOUCLEFF: Which in turn sounds like...

MCKENNA: Hush⁹, hush, hush, little baby.

DOUCLEFF: ...The universal sound to soothe¹⁰ a crying baby. The baby is so drawn¹¹ to the mother at night that she doesn't move all around the bed. Instead, she stays focused on one location.

MCKENNA: The babies are basically staring at their mother's breast almost all night. They just stay there.

DOUCLEFF: By nestling close to her baby, McKenna found the mom is helping¹² regulate the baby's physiology.

MCKENNA: This is the evolved context for a baby to live and experience night after night after night.

DOUCLEFF: So why has sleeping with babies become so stigmatized¹³ that moms are hiding this from their doctors? In 2011, pediatricians in the U.S. started giving parents a strong universal recommendation.

PETER BLAIR: Parents just shouldn't bed share. It was a simple, direct message. Don't bed share.

DOUCLEFF: That's Peter Blair, a SIDS researcher at the University of Bristol. He says pediatricians were trying to cut down the rate of sudden infant death syndrome¹⁴. Some studies suggested that bed-sharing was a big risk for SIDS. There was just one problem. The studies lumped together all types of bed-sharing, including when a baby was put in very dangerous circumstances.

BLAIR: Those infants who were sleeping next to parents who drank some alcohol and those parents that are taking some drugs, normally cannabis or methadone and that sort of thing.

DOUCLEFF: The evidence is strong and clear. Parents who drink or do drugs shouldn't be sleeping with their babies because they are intoxicated¹⁵ and can roll over on the child. Babies who are born premature¹⁶ or whose parents smoke shouldn't sleep in the parents' bed because of potential problems with their respiratory system. And suffocation¹⁷ can also happen when babies sleep on sofas.

BLAIR: The question really was, well, in the absence of these hazardous¹⁸ situations, is there actually a risk of bed-sharing?

DOUCLEFF: So far, there have been only two studies to look at this. Robert Platt is a biostatistician at McGill University. He analyzed¹⁹ the studies for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Both studies found no increased risk for babies over three months of age. And for the younger babies...

ROBERT PLATT: There may be an increased risk and if there is an increased risk, it's probably not of a comparable magnitude to some of these other risk factors.

DOUCLEFF: Let's take Melissa Nichols. Her little girl was born super healthy - full-term, normal weight and Nichols doesn't smoke or drink. So her baby's risk of SIDS, even when she bed shares, is tiny. It's six-thousandths of 1 percent, which means the baby is more likely to get struck by lightning in her lifetime than die of SIDS. In other words, the risk of bed-sharing is not the same for every family. That's why other countries have taken a more nuanced approach. New Zealand has been leading the way.

Dr. Ed Mitchell is a pediatrician and SIDS researcher at the University of Auckland. He says because of this, they've seen huge progress against SIDS.

ED MITCHELL: We've had a 30 percent reduction in mortality since 2010.

DOUCLEFF: Pediatricians there and in Britain are teaching families how to reduce their risk while bed-sharing.

MITCHELL: We are now talking about a safer bed-sharing. And that takes all the steam out of it.

DOUCLEFF: Dr. Lori Feldman-Winter is a pediatrician at Cooper University Health Care and a member of the AAP's Task Force on SIDS. She says the AAP is standing²⁰ by its recommendation against bed-sharing until they get more data. Nevertheless, she knows mothers are hiding and says pediatricians need to be more tolerant of family choices so families don't feel judged.

LORI FELDMAN-WINTER: We don't want families to be saying that they don't feel comfortable saying basically what they're doing.

DOUCLEFF: Because then conversation stops and families are left without any information. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

3 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

4 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

5 dame   

n.女士

参考例句：

• The dame tell of her experience as a wife and mother.这位年长妇女讲了她作妻子和母亲的经验。
• If you stick around,you'll have to marry that dame.如果再逗留多一会，你就要跟那个夫人结婚。

6 physiology   

n.生理学，生理机能

参考例句：

• He bought a book about physiology.他买了一本生理学方面的书。
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize for achievements in physiology.他因生理学方面的建树而被授予诺贝尔奖。

7 suffocate   

vt.使窒息，使缺氧，阻碍；vi.窒息，窒息而亡，阻碍发展

参考例句：

• If you shut all the windows,I will suffocate.如果你把窗户全部关起来，我就会闷死。
• The stale air made us suffocate.浑浊的空气使我们感到窒息。

8 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

9 hush   

int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静

参考例句：

• A hush fell over the onlookers.旁观者们突然静了下来。
• Do hush up the scandal!不要把这丑事声张出去！

10 soothe   

v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承

参考例句：

• I've managed to soothe him down a bit.我想方设法使他平静了一点。
• This medicine should soothe your sore throat.这种药会减轻你的喉痛。

11 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

13 stigmatized   

v.使受耻辱，指责，污辱( stigmatize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was stigmatized as an ex-convict. 他遭人污辱，说他给判过刑。 来自辞典例句
• Such a view has been stigmatized as mechanical jurisprudence. 蔑称这种观点为机械法学。 来自辞典例句

14 syndrome   

n.综合病症；并存特性

参考例句：

• The Institute says that an unidentified virus is to blame for the syndrome. 该研究所表示,引起这种综合症的是一种尚未确认的病毒。
• Results indicated that 11 fetuses had Down syndrome. 结果表明有11个胎儿患有唐氏综合征。

15 intoxicated   

喝醉的，极其兴奋的

参考例句：

• She was intoxicated with success. 她为成功所陶醉。
• They became deeply intoxicated and totally disoriented. 他们酩酊大醉，东南西北全然不辨。

16 premature   

adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的

参考例句：

• It is yet premature to predict the possible outcome of the dialogue.预言这次对话可能有什么结果为时尚早。
• The premature baby is doing well.那个早产的婴儿很健康。

17 suffocation   

n.窒息

参考例句：

• The greatest dangers of pyroclastic avalanches are probably heat and suffocation. 火成碎屑崩落的最大危害可能是炽热和窒息作用。 来自辞典例句
• The room was hot to suffocation. 房间热得闷人。 来自辞典例句

18 hazardous   

adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的

参考例句：

• These conditions are very hazardous for shipping.这些情况对航海非常不利。
• Everybody said that it was a hazardous investment.大家都说那是一次危险的投资。

19 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。