Dr. James Mckenna discusses his book, “Introducing breastsleeping - a new understanding of humanity’s time-honored sleeping and feeding arrangement: Safe Infant Sleep: Expert Answers to Your Cosleeping Questions.” We speak about the mother-baby environment, and the myriad benefits (mental and physical) that come from keeping the mother-baby unit together.
Dr. James Mckenna is the leading expert on mother-infant sleep in the United States. He founded and directed the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame - the first of its kind to study the physiology and behavior of cosleeping parents and infnats. He has appeared on NBC, CNN, ABC, The Today Show, and NPR, and is a global voice on the relationship between bedsharing, breastfedding and SIDS.
With the birth of his son, he and his wife discovered that their readings about how to care for infants were steering them directly in opposition with everything that seemed to them, natural, and instinctive.
In his view, we are built for family ties, connection, and wired for a deeply important bond with our mother or caretaker. The healthy baby’s “premature” body at infancy is still incredibly dependent on the mother’s body as its environment. And for these reasons, among others, Mckenna argues that human babies are not physically ready for our culture of putting a newborn baby in a separate room, whereby we expect them to learn independence in a crib, away from mother.
Connect with Dr. James McKenna
Twitter ➡️: https://twitter.com/drjamesmckenna
Website ➡️: https://cosleeping.nd.edu/
----CONTENT ----------------------
00:00 Introduction
02:08 Primates and human babies
09:57 The fourth trimester
12:00 Babies don't manipulate
14:13 Cosleeping isn't for everyone
18:19 Defining cosleeping
23:05 Cosleeping bassinets
24:36 A carrying species
26:36 The importance of touch
28:00 Breathing and SIDS
32:17 Cry it out
35:10 The idea of a "good" baby
37:47 The mother is the habitat
42:48 Evolution and world cultures
44:14 SIDS
49:28 The medical context
58:08 Why guidelines are needed
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