A University of Queensland student is leading the way with her world-first research on maternal and newborn co-sleeping practices in maternity units.

According to UQ School of Nursing and Midwifery honours student Cassia Drever-Smith, almost no research, either in Australia or from around the world, investigates what guides co-sleeping education and practice as implemented by midwives in hospital maternity units.

Co-sleeping or "bed sharing" - the practice of a mother and her infant sharing the same sleeping surface - while practiced almost ubiquitously in developing nations, and at some point in time by almost all western families, has become a topic of debate.

The most topical and obvious answer for this debate appears to rest squarely with the SIDS issue, into which co-sleeping practices have become inextricably intertwined.

Of the 292,156 women to give birth in Australia in 2008, most will share a sleep surface with their baby at some point during the first 24 months of the child's life.

Many of these women admit to co-sleeping with their infants, and for some, this practice will begin in the hospital maternity unit setting.

Ms Drever-Smith's research focuses on the practices and beliefs of midwives surrounding co-sleeping in hospital maternity units and its subsequent impact on parental co-sleeping practices.

Today, women approach motherhood with fewer examples of birth and parenting. This, combined with an increasing incidence of smaller families and later parturition has lead to little exposure to pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and child rearing.

For many, the initial and sometimes only exposure they have to these skills is from the observation of, and tutelage from, midwives involved in their peri-partum care.

According to Ms Drever-Smith, midwives receive little, if any education on co-sleeping, and may have a propensity to rely on their own experiences and cultural norms to educate mothers, or do not raise the topic at all.

Most interestingly, the majority of Australian maternity units do not have publicly available clinical practice guidelines about co-sleeping to guide midwives.

Early findings have indicated that in order to provide safe care and informed education, midwives need to have the means to access current, evidence based research to assist with education.

This in turn would provide parents with the correct information to enable them to make informed decisions about infant sleeping practices.

Source:
University of Queensland