Irresponsible and unhelpful article about baby’s death?

Why is OP getting a hard time? MN is far too full of people piling in to give posters a kicking before thinking about the issue properly. OP is clearly an anxious new parent, and the way some of you are treating her is awful.

OP - I get where you're coming from. I suspect it was either SIDS or suffocation. The baby was left on a sofa, which can cause overheating or suffocate the baby if they wedge themselves between cushions, or fall off and bang their head.

SIDS rates dramatically reduce if the baby sleeps in their own cot (no bedsharing), in the same room as a competent adult.

This woman was paralytically drunk, so much so that the next day she was still 2.5 times over the drink drive limit (so she must have been many, many times over the previous night). She was also a smoker, which substantially increases SIDS rates even when people don't smoke indoors - the residue sticks to clothes, skin and hair.

This doesn't mean you can't go to the bathroom or nip down to grab a cup of tea whilst the baby is asleep, nor does it mean you can't have a couple of glasses of wine in an evening. Your baby will be fine in their cot if left for a few minutes. Please don't worry!

You know, in my line of work, you come across many people who have quite dangerous ideas about babycare. Whether that might be around feeding, temperature, weaning or whatever. While some of the ideas might cluster in certain cultures, there isnt a culture or demographic who never have these dangerous ideas.

For instance, when it comes to temperature, lots of people who arent from Europe have the house dangerously warm. But then lots of people from Europe go the opposite way and their homes are kept a bit too cold for the baby. Especially with high ceilings and open plan layouts.

One thing that can be persistent is the idea that you never wake a sleeping baby. The number of times I have gone for a first newborn visit to a home where whispering parents greet me telling me "good" the baby is and how well it has slept "all night". Most of the time the baby just needs to be immediately woken for a good feed and a talk about how babies work, but there have been times where the parents had no idea that the baby was unwell and now needed an A+E visit. Partly due to the fact they hadn't fed it enough, or even tried to.

So really, I am not surprised at anyone asking this question about this baby. Ive known totally stable parents to leave younger babies for 12 hours without feeding and been mortified when a HCP has said they shouldn't.

The key learning point is don't drink, don't go out for a fag while you're looking after a baby.

@NET145 I agree, but that's often the case with news in the UK, not specifically this article. Looks like it's about getting the news out there ASAP even if they don't have the full story. I often see useless articles full of gaps, leaving plenty of room for guesses and gossips.

Well I would suggest if you really can't criticise the behaviour of a person who, when in sole charge of two children, one of whom is a 5 month old baby, drinks to excess, smokes and leaves them to go to the shops, then you have no conception of right and wrong. Or of the needs , rights and safety of young children.

There’s obviously a lot of missing info in the article so no, you’re not unreasonable in trying to establish more facts to this case.

What exactly happened isn’t your business though, is it?

The reality is that this baby was likely chronically malnourished and dehydrated as well as maybe unwell. This meant that the 14 hours without fluids or nourishment was too much for their system to cope with. They likely developed a very low sugar level and that led to death.

If you genuinely want tips from this article this main takeaways are:

• don't get drunk around your baby (esp if you're the sole responsible adult)
• follow the safe sleep guidelines
• know your baby's sleep patterns and check in on them if they're sleeping more than usual
• smoking around children is not recommended

I understood what you meant! You’re worried you wouldn’t notice the ‘signs of deterioration’ either even if sober because you might not know what to look for as it’s your first! I also worried about stuff like this with my first, now I’ve got 3 I reckon the things they’ll be talking about would be this (not medical just things I’ve noticed from my kids)

change in movement- sleep too ‘still’ not moving like normal
breathing differently - more shallow
change in temp - too warm/cold/clammy
odd sounds like an unnatural gurgling
sleeping too long without waking! You know what’s normal for your baby - if it changes dramatically it should alarm you (but you wouldn’t notice if you were smashed)
change in colour in face or extremities

a normal attentive parent would be picking them up, checking on them, looking at them especially at 5 months when they’re not supposed to sleep alone.

I don’t think they mention cause of death but it seems to be me from the way it’s written it wasn’t SIDS where nothing could have been done regardless of her behaviour. It implies there were signs that were missed because of appalling parent behaviour

I can see what the op is saying. Is the offence being drunk and irresponsible or is it her failure to act to help her child who needed medical supervision? If it's the latter, and the child was healthy when put down to sleep - is the expectation that it is criminal to not pro-actively check that a healthy child has become unwell overnight?

I expect the baby wasn't fine when put to sleep though, op. You can have say a wheezing baby who is general unwell, but might perk up in the afternoon and be described as 'fine', but actually if you have been told to look for blue around the lips, or tugging at the throat and under the ribs, that they aren't and were never fine - they just weren't being noisy in their distress - and that kind of observation would require you to be alert and sober. Breathing issues is the one I'm most familiar with but I expect there are lots of things which are similar.

I know, there was also a thread I think on Friday where a number of posters were annoyed that a nursery worker was being punished for sexually abusing children. A lot
of MN parents don’t seem to value the welfare or safety of children at all.

Another thread defending this parent who failed to care for their baby to the extent that the baby died? How odd.

Well as you’re after tips to avoid doing the same thing people will likelg assume thats how you choose to parent. As otherwise you don’t need to ask how to avoid doing it.

This isn’t the way to go about that. This is an article about a specific case in which the parent was so drunk off her arse that she wasn’t even aware that her baby didn’t wake up.

If you’re concerned about other things such as SIDS in general, then google the lullaby trust and stop speculating on this case.

i also agree with a PP about your ridiculous ‘stigmatisation’ comment.

Your best bet for this kind of information is to ask your health visitor or look at the NHS website (there are a list of signs for when you should seek medical attention). The Lullaby Trust also has good information on safe sleep to prevent SIDs and positional asphyxia.
The court report into the death of a child isn’t going to have this information for you.

As a new parent I imagine you are alert to every sneeze, snuffle & cry from your baby. If your baby stopped behaving normally you would almost certainly be aware. The cause the death of this baby doesn't need to be publicised, but the carelessness (other words spring to mind) of the mother does need to be publicised so that others think twice.

They aren’t obliged to share the cause of death with the general public.

How regularly do you get extremely drunk, dump your baby on the sofa and then ignore them for 14 hours?

And also stigmatises a mother who, other than drink and smoke, does not explicitly seem to have done something harmful.

Well it sounds very much as though you are

I am genuinely very confused about this article and would appreciate if someone could shed light so we can learn from it.

The actual cause of death has not been shared that I have seen. It could have been sids, it could have been something like positional asphyxiation where the baby got wedged somehow in the couch and wasn't able to breathe, it could be that she hadn't had milk in so many hours that she became critically dehydrated.

I think what we can all take from this is that if we are the only adults responsible for a baby we should not get so drunk that we are unable to actually be responsible for the baby.

It doesn’t confirm the cause of death. It doesn’t need to. Your curiosity about the cause of death here is execessive.