McKenna & Gettler (2015): Breastsleeping
Breastfeeding and cosleeping are biologically one process, not two
Acta Paediatrica paper arguing that mother-infant cosleeping with breastfeeding is so physiologically integrated that treating them as separate behaviors misrepresents the biology. Coined the term 'breastsleeping' to describe the unified process.
The 2015 McKenna and Gettler paper in Acta Paediatrica argued for a conceptual reframing. The title states their position: "There is no such thing as infant sleep, there is no such thing as breastfeeding, there is only breastsleeping." The argument is that mother-infant cosleeping with breastfeeding is so physiologically integrated that treating them as separate behaviors misrepresents the biology.
Babies who sleep near their mother feed more often, regulate their breathing and temperature in response to the mother's, and show measurable differences in physiological state compared with infants who sleep separately. The paper has been cited widely in the evolutionary anthropology and lactation literature, and is one of the most influential recent papers on the conceptual basis of cosleeping research.
2015
Acta Paediatrica publication
Breastsleeping
Term coined by paper
Integrated
Biological framing
Widely cited
In lactation & anthropology
Why it matters
The categories used in public health messaging (sleep, feeding, soothing) are administrative categories, not biological ones. The body treats nighttime mother-infant contact as a single integrated process.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.