A recent study revealing that one third of Swedish mothers and 59 percent of US mothers have sex while their baby sleeps in the same bed has sparked debate amongst mothers everywhere. One woman even admitted to it on the ITV's This Morning show this week.

Lynnea Shrief told interviewers that she and her husband chose to have both her children sleep in the same bed as them when they were infants. "I co-slept with both my children and breastfed them until they were between nine and 12 months.

"If the baby woke up I would roll over and breastfeed, and then go back to sleep.

"Occasionally if my husband and I felt like kissing or making love, we did it. It would always be an intimate and passionate act. It wasn't this noisy, wild act of sex that I think some people are imagining."

Sonia Poulton took the opposite view, calling the act of having sex in the same bed as an infant "disgusting", adding that the only time we should mix babies and sex is "when you are creating them".

Poulton defended her position on the subject, denying she was uptight about sex and that her gut instinct said that it was wrong. She was most concerned that a child would be mentally disturbed by the act.

"I know a woman my age whose first memory is of hearing her parents having sex in the next room. She thought at the time that her father was killing her mother. She is disturbed by it to this day."

Shrief said that that's why she and her husband made love quietly, so as not to wake their sleeping children.

She also pointed out that sex was an important part of the bond with her husband.

"I deserve to make love to my husband in the very bed my baby was created in."

Shrief also pointed out that parents who were emotionally connected and who expressed love towards one another was a far healthier environment for a child to grow up in. "You have to keep your relationship going for the sake of your family," she pointed out, suggesting that making love next to a sleeping infant is in fact a positive event in their lives.

Co-presenter Philip Schofield expressed his skepticism at Poulton's claim that the act was verging on child abuse by reminding her that while only a third of Swedish mums admitted to having sex in the same bed as their infant, the majority of women in the US study - 59 percent - admitted to the act. If Poulton's theory that such an act caused serious psychological trauma to an infant, then there should be many "messed up children" in the world.

Whether or not having sex in the same bed as your infant is acceptable boils down to culture, argued Shrief, to which Poulton agreed, adding that she would never be able to feel turned on with baby in the bed.

Do you think having sex in the same bed as baby is acceptable? Tell us in the comments section below.