I think this information from James McKenna, is also helpful. I would agree with Rotten that more studies, revealing the actual circumstances of these infant mortalities are in order.

http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/161/3/237

Bottom line: more and better studies needed, no clear conclusion, etc. for non-smoking sober families sleeping in beds, not couches. I don’t know how we go from this to PSAs on the dangers of co-sleeping.

My daughter needed me to soothe her. I was happy to get out of bed to do it. Again, more sleep for both of us that way b/c of my anxities.

From Dr Nils Bergman:

Protest despair response.

Failure to be kept in contact with the mothers skin, maintains Bergman, is not only a negative behaviour but also creates a state of pathophysiological stress. This is true for healthy full-term babies, as well as those born prematurely. As with other mammals that are moved from their natural environment, human babies react with protest and despair. In the protest phase, the baby tries intensely to re-establish contact with its correct environment, the mother, usually by crying.

If that fails, the baby becomes too tired to cry anymore. Instead it lapses into a state of despair in which the individual withdraws in order to conserve energy and concentrate on survival. The result of this is a lower body temperature and heartbeat, while at the same time there are greatly increased levels of stress hormones, because a baby separated from its mother, is in fact stressed. When the baby is returned to its correct environment, which is skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest, the temperature and heart rate quickly return to normal levels.

Human babies are biologically extremely immature when they are born. Nils Bergman points out that the newborn’s brain size is only 25% of its final size, which he compares with 45% in chimpanzees and 80% in antelopes. Not until around one year of age does the human baby’s brain reach 80% of its final size. Compared with other mammals, we should have a 21-month pregnancy. The reason human babies are born so early and so immature is the fact that the width of the birth canal through the mother’s pelvis was reduced when our ancestors started walking upright. At the same time the brain volume increased. The evolutionary solution was that babies began to be born earlier and therefore more immature, and in need of constant parental care.

Cribs are small and can easily fit in a bedroom, if you need them to. Besides which, I think you underestimate children when you say the don’t have “mechanisms” to soothe themselves.