Do you tell your pediatrician you’re bedsharing ?

@blessedj316 CPS. In my area you’re physically not allowed to leave the hospital with your baby unless they’re in a car seat. They have to see the baby in an infant seat before you’re discharged. They make you watch mandatory videos before you’re discharged that emphasized bed sharing was child endangerment. Literally scared the living shit out of me. They’re pretty strict where I am.
 
@sazbastein My daughter was preterm (5.5lbs) and they actually had to do a O2 saturation test in her car seat before we left the hospital. We brought the seat up, and they took her to the nursery where they kept her in it for 90 minutes and measured her oxygen levels to make sure it was safe for her.
 
@robbu I’m a pediatrician.. that’s normal and required because there are many premature babies that do not have the neck strength or breathing coordination to keep their sats up in a car seat.

It’s fine to want pediatricians not to lecture you on safe sleep, but a premie baby definitely needs to be able to prove they can survive being in a car seat
 
@katrina2017 Oh I’m not mad about it at all! I was actually really glad they did that so I was confident that I could take her on longer car rides and not worry about whether the car seat was safe!
 
@katrina2017 In the UK, none of my 4 NICU babies, 3 of whom were premature, have ever had to do a car seat test.

They were all off oxygen before they came home if that makes a difference, but with 4 of them I'd consider myself a fairly experienced NICU mum and have never come across that here.
 
@robbu That makes sense. Hope your girl is doing well now!

I was planning on getting a convertible seat (my little dude was born on the bigger side, which was obvious because I was carrying huge & he was measuring big) but was told that I needed to carry him out in a seat so we got the infant seat & then switched to convertible once he hit 18 lbs.
 
@sazbastein Where in PA are you? I’m near Philly and they did all that at the hospital with us but our pediatrician hasn’t reported us for bed sharing or documented it anywhere and it’s through Penn Medicine which is pretty reputable
 
@mrscelland Also near Philly, about an hour East. It might be my demographic area why it’s so frowned on by our peds but my visiting nurse strongly recommended we not share the information with my kids doctor.
 
@person47 Nope. I’ve never done it. We only disclosed this information to really close family.

Now he does sleep in his crib, but we coslept for idk 6 -7 months?! It was hard but now I miss it.
 
@wren84 I second this. I’m a medical professional myself and medical professionals from the other side of the world actually push for cosleeping/bedsharing so I’m going to do what’s best for my family and what’s instinctual to me—even if it means protecting myself from the “expertise” (aka judgment) of others.
 
@person47 Fwiw I have a neighbor friend who bedshares and she tells them so outright and nothing has come of it. I’m in PA, I saw a previous commenter say they’ll report you to cps but I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
 
@bhswrh Exactly. Sleep (unless there's a disorder) is more of a parenting choice than a medical situation. My ped recommended CIO (gently, not being pushy or anything), and my husband and I politely nodded. When we got in the car I was like "I don't want to do CIO..." and he interjected and was like "oh absolutely we're not doing that." 😂 I'm glad we were on the same page with that minor deception.
 

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