Message on a Mattress: Put Baby in a Crib

MILWAUKEE (July 18) -- "Babies who sleep here don't always wake up."

That's one of the messages emblazoned across dozens of mattresses and two sofas lined up alongside a busy city intersection, the words superimposed over the neon-orange outline of a crawling baby. Others read: "Imagine how many babies would still be alive if they'd slept in a crib."

The display is the latest in the city's campaign to keep parents from sleeping with their babies -- a message that officials say is vital to protect "our most precious jewels," but that one critic calls arrogant, offensive and misleading.

"Adult beds are not the place for babies to sleep safely -- neither are couches or chairs," city Commissioner of Health Bevan Baker said at a news conference this week as workers lined the mattresses up along the grassy median.

At least eight children died in unsafe sleep environments -- such as adult beds and couches -- in Milwaukee this year. Baker said. Sleep-related deaths in the city average 23 a year, he said.

Common Council President Willie Hines noted that some people may find the display disturbing, but added that it will get their attention.

"We must take every precautionary measure to protect our most precious jewels, our kids," Hines said at the news conference.

Their message quickly drew criticism from advocates of co-sleeping, who say that mothers sharing beds with their infants can be an important part of establishing a successful breastfeeding relationship and can be safe and beneficial.

"Milwaukee city officials who designed this misleading, arrogant and offensive campaign should be fired," said James McKenna, a professor and director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame.

"Citizens of Milwaukee need to keep in mind that the money used to support this ugly campaign is their own," he told AOL News.

McKenna's research, which has influenced pediatricians nationwide, provides evidence that babies biologically "expect" to sleep near their mothers and that their fundamental makeup requires them to sleep near the touch, smell and sound of their breastfeeding mothers.

"They [Milwaukee city officials] insist on simplifying a complex and biologically appropriate aspect of human behavior -- sleeping with baby," McKenna said. "But it's a very dangerous thing, from the science end of it. The underlying message is: Mothers are lethal weapons. To send moms home from the hospital thinking that their bodies are harmful to their babies -- that's dangerous.

"This just has to be challenged."

The campaign has also drawn criticism because it targets all parents who sleep with their children. However, the count of "co-sleeping deaths" includes parents who passed out from drugs and alcohol and suffocated their infants as they slept. It also includes babies sleeping in dangerous conditions, such as on their stomachs on sofas.

The city's "safe sleep" campaign began in December. It has included radio spots and billboards around the city with an image of an adult bed, the headboard replaced by a tombstone with the words: "For too many babies last year, this was their final resting place."

At a Safe Sleep Summit held earlier this year in Milwaukee, experts noted that the city's infant mortality rate (the number of infants who died under age 1 per 1,000 live births) is among the highest in the country at 10.7. That compares with 6.4 for the United States.

The rate of sudden infant death syndrome in Milwaukee is also well above the national rate: 1.42 per 1,000 live births in Milwaukee in 2008, compared with 0.55 for the United States. The emphasis specifically on co-sleeping came because three out of every four Milwaukee County babies who suffocated in their sleep or died of SIDS in 2007 and 2008 were sleeping with an adult or with another child, according to an analysis of infant deaths conducted by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office and by the Children's Health Alliance of Wisconsin.

And Milwaukee isn't the only city taking an aggressive stance against co-sleeping. Television ads in Indiana that showed a mother cuddled with her infant on a couch when the baby stops breathing drew fire earlier this year from critics. And New York launched a less controversial campaign in 2008 with the message: "Babies sleep safest alone."

The night after Milwaukee's latest display went up, another child died in an incident classified as a co-sleeping death -- in this case, a 9-month-old girl who died Wednesday while sleeping with her sister.

Makyla K. Johnson had been sleeping on her stomach on a sofa with her 3-year-old sister when her father found her with her eyes glazed over early Wednesday, according to a Milwaukee County medical examiner's report.