Eye Opening Dangers of Co-Sleeping

This is some info that the public health nurse shared with me:
"More  babies die each year due to suffocation while co sleeping with their parents, than from SIDS"

I thought this sounded crazy because as parents and parents to be you hear all about SIDS and rarely anything about co-sleeping. It's also such a common and easy thing to do. Baby falls asleep in your arms, you are either really tired and just fall asleep or you don't want to risk moving the baby to the crib because he/she may wake up...

I found on many websites that more than 2x of babies are dying from suffocation rather than from the mystery diagnosis of SIDS. Not all of these suffocation deaths are from co sleeping, some are from bumpers in the crib, toys or blankets in cribs, or even babies sleeping on their stomach...but many of them are happening when co-sleeping. There have been many times co-sleeping has resulted in parents rolling over on top of their baby, bunching up blankets into their baby or pushing pillows into their baby. Obviously not doing these on purpose but still all could have been prevented.

SIDS is still something that Chad and I constantly worry about and do everything we can to help prevent it: put Ellery on her back when sleeping, use a firm mattress, keep the house at 70 degrees, give her a pacifier at night, etc. However even with doing all those things we still have a worry in the back of our heads of SIDS because there are so little things known to for sure cause it. But I know now after talking to the public health nurse, and doing some of my own research, I will no longer co-sleep with her. That is something I have full control over and I can't imagine putting her at risk like that.

Take this information or leave it, I'm not judging anyone who has co-slept with their little one, but it was defiantly an eye opener for me.