Irresponsible and unhelpful article about baby’s death?

It's pretty clear from the OP what the actual fuck she is on about - namely, that: "this type of article is alarming enough to raise anxiety levels but too vague to actually help inform or equip parents and careers"

It really isn't - she's a new mum and not unnaturally, wants to know what caused the death of the baby as a drunk mother is not a cause of death

I agree OP.

I think it’s crucial that the cause of death should have been established before the prosecution was undertaken and it should have been made known in court.

If the baby died from SIDS then it would have made no difference whether the parent was stone cold sober and sat two feet away from the baby all night or intoxicated to the point of passing out, as they couldn’t have foreseen or altered the tragic outcome.

I don’t think this was a genuine good faith prosecution.

On the surface it looks like a case of wanting to stigmatise a (working class?) single mum for daring to drink too much alcohol whilst celebrating her birthday with her friend at home.

There are plenty of middle class Mumsnet posters who regard using alcohol at home as a perfectly normal way to unwind and they'd be given support and sympathy if it was their baby who died.

If it was SIDS, I hope the mother appeals the verdict.

For the record, I am not supportive of parents getting drunk around children and I rarely drink alcohol and my DH is completely teetotal.

OP I for one hear you. The mother didn't cause the death; if the child had not died that night, her behaviour would have caused at most a call to social services, and it is far from clear that her not having drunk wine or gone outside to smoke would have meant that she'd have noticed something was amiss in time to do anything about it ( and what exactly, in case of SIDS?).

Reminds me of the prosecutions supported by Roy Meadows of mothers of babies who died from SIDS. It's just so easy to blame mothers, especially struggling ones.

We dont lnow if timely intervention on the mothers part may have saved her child's life (at least from the information released). What we do know is that she was not properly caring for her child, she was incapable of proper care due to alcohol consumption and appears to have left her child unattended in an unsafe place. These are things that should be unlawful regardless of whether they actually caused a death. In much the same way as driving whilst over the limit is unlawful even if its unclear whether your actions directly caused a fatality.

They don’t have to put all the details. Saying the article is “irresponsible” is batshit OP!!

It could be a number of things - baby suffocated due to being placed on an unsafe sleeping surface without supervision. Maybe baby was sick and choked, or got a fever and wasn’t cared for.

It doesn’t matter in terms of your learning, because whatever happened, the mum was drunk and left baby unsupervised. As a first time parent, that is the lesson you take - you don’t leave a baby unsupervised and you don’t get drunk if you’re the only one there to care for them. Hope that helps.

It's a court report about the mother's conviction. It doesn't have to get into the details of why precisely the child died 'so we can learn from it'. To fixate on that and say "we need to know!" is odd. Sure it's not that there's some new cause of infant death that needs public awareness raising. The focus in on the parental neglect and as long as we're not neglecting our DC there's nothing to learn here beyond the things we already knows about childcare and general vigilance. It's a sad news story and the ins and outs of how the baby died is not a learning opportunity for the OP.

@NET145 Unable to confirm reasons for infant deterioration but Judge likely to have enough evidence to conclude that if Mum had checked on her infant, she was likely to notice something wasn't right and call for help and child's chance of survival likely to have increased. Incidentally for all parents with their first child https://www.nhs.uk/baby/health/is-your-baby-or-toddler-seriously-ill/

Of course it’s clear that you shouldn’t be pissed whilst looking after kids. Posters aren’t arguing otherwise.

you made a nasty post about the OPs interest in the cause of death being excessive, when actually it’s entirely reasonable to want to know why the baby died, because actually it’s not at all clear that it was the not looking after the baby that led to it’s death.

OP, I don't think it was irresponsible or unhelpful.

Regardless of the cause of death, the parent was not capable of looking after the child properly - that is a huge and dangerous amount of alcohol.

It's a very sad story. Besides the terrible mistake this person made, there are wider questions for the alcohol industry and public health messaging, and indeed the whole of society. There is so much encouragement to drink.

The baby had died hours before and rigor mortis had set in, they mean the condition of the babys body deteriorated. So she hasn't checked on her baby in the morning and left her sleeping on a sofa more than overnight

I wonder how many parents (including some Mumsnetters) will think “there but for the grace of God…..” when they read about this case.

Hopefully not too many, and fingers crossed this will be the catalyst for them to change.

The mum wasn’t paying attention to the baby and left her in an unsafe sleeping place for 14 hours. Because she was drunk off her arse. Anything could have happened, regardless of what it was. It could have been sids because of the place she was left in, or she could have suffocated.

The basic message here is don’t get pissed when looking after your kids. Because it means you don’t look after them. Anything could happen. I don’t get why this isn’t clear.

But it’s not meant to be a informative article on the critical signs of infant distress - it’s an news report on the neglect by a an alcoholic mother. If you want to be informed about the former, google it and/r speak to a health visitor (in fact, if you already have a baby, you will have been given all the information already).

When my babies were 5m old, they slept in my room, within touching distance as I was a bit neurotic, and I never drank alcohol (I was trying/failing to breast feed). I was fully able to hear instantly, even when I was asleep, any change in the timbre and rhythm of my child’s breathing. I also knew their nappy needed checking after 6hrs so even if they were a sleep, I’d gently undo their babygro and check if they were wet.

This woman a) was comatose through alcohol consumption so could not tune into her child, b) did not do even those basic routine checks as she left the baby for over 12 hours unchecked, and c) was not even in the same room. There is no doubt that her neglect contributed on some level to this infant’s death but I suspect it was difficult to prove this is law for a manslaughter charge, hence the child neglect charge instead.

There are two separate issues here; the mother’s neglect which led to the child cruelty charge and the child’s death.

The cause of death (or lack eg SIDS) will be established at the inquest, which can only take place after the criminal investigation and trial conclude. Checking and identifying signs of distress may not have saved the baby but checking babies regularly, putting baby down in a suitable cot, being sober enough to identify their needs, etc all reduce risk.

Separately, the baby’s death triggered scrutiny of the mum’s parenting which meant the neglect was identified. This could have happened if the baby had been injured or someone reported concerns, whether the baby died or not isn’t the sole measure of cruelty/neglect. The trial was focused on this, not the death.

I had an elderly relative dropped in a care home. My friend said "dont report or the carer will be punished, and then they will quit. There are not enough carers to do the job"

My view was its either training (so the home needs to their training) or lazyness/other and I dont want people like that working there.

Leaving a baby in a non safe sleeping environment like a sofa is a big risk factor for SIDS or potential suffocation. Smoking in the house, even with the door open is another risk factor for SIDS. If you smoke you are even advised to change your clothes before handling the baby as even smoky clothes can affect their breathing. Babies cry and wake regularly as a natural protection against SIDS, the baby didn’t wake for 14 hours which was a massive red flag. If the parent had been sober and not drunk on vodka, they may have been capable of caring for the baby and preventing the incident or at least getting medical attention earlier.

Not sure why it needs explaining to you that neglect can be a cause or contributing factor to the death of a helpless baby op.

She did not notice her daughter failed to wake for her usual morning feed and she did not notice her deterioration in health.

When ambulance crews arrived, they noted signs of rigor mortis which indicated Rhian may have been dead for some time

Maybe if she had paid attention to her baby she may have noticed she wasn't well.

Do you have children? Did you pay attention when they were not able to tell you they were not well? Its basic parenting. Want to go get drunk with your mates when you dont have a responsible person around? Don't have a baby.

This is so sad actually reading how things happened. Baby asleep on the sofa so asphyxiation could just be the cause of death unfortunately.

Completely understand what you are asking OP. It's not the act of looking at the baby which saves its life, it's the action taken based on whatever you might see. You want to know what SPECIFICALLY the mother in this case didn't see or didn't act on, to reassure yourself that you would, in fact, pick that up yourself.

As has been said, baby was in an unsafe sleeping position. So almost certainly, they had at some point suffocated due to that.

If you are observing all the safe sleep guidelines then the risk of SIDs really is vanishingly unlikely. So your takeaway from this is probably that you are already doing everything necessary. And if your baby slept for an unusually long time, then you would check that they are still breathing. Which you would probably be aware of anyway by just being in the room.

The very fact that you're asking this question (even though you've been given an unwarranted hard time!!) means you're probably already being very careful to do the right things, so don't let this article worry you 💐

But there’s no signs of any other cause of death. Normally if a baby dies at a young age while asleep and no cause of death can be found it is attributed to SIDS purely because there’s no sign of anything else.

From the previous thread on this, I gauged that she put her baby to sleep on a sofa which contributed to their death.

But she put her child to sleep at I believe 6pm and then didn't check back on them until 9am. Any sober, and caring mother would have checked on their baby well before this.
Especially if sleeping in an inappropriate bed.
Also, it's reccommended that babies sleep in the same room as their care givers for 6 months atleast.

All of these things together paint a picture of a pretty neglectful environment.

But I do grasp that for a new mum, anxiety is high and the article not specifically saying what happened could heighten that anxiety.

I don’t think they actually know that seeing as they can’t ascertain cause of death. A deterioration in health could be sudden or gradual. If I have a sudden cardiac arrest I could be dead in under a minute and someone could say my health deteriorated in the space of ten seconds 🤷‍♀️. It might have been sudden with this baby or it could have been gradual. If it was sudden no amount of checking would have helped. But placing baby in a safer space may have helped, though again there have been babies in a cot with no risk factors who have died suddenly in their sleep.

More info here.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/west-midlands/news/mother-convicted-child-cruelty-after-getting-drunk-vodka

Maybe they don't know what the cause of death was. Leaving a baby to sleep on a sofa is not a good idea and as others have said it could be SIDS, asphyxiation, might be a fever or anything.

If the baby passed away due to SIDS I'd very much doubt there would be criminal proceedings for neglect etc because there are no signs and it's not preventable and most parents would be asleep.