Dangers of Infant radiant heaters

[Justamama23]

I had my 3rd baby in 2019, and as soon as he was born the midwife put him in an infant radiant heater and switched it on. She went off on her lunch break and the heater began to beep, my husband and I didn’t know what to do as she didn’t instruct us to remove my baby. After a while my baby’s chest and face became extremely red and he started to cry uncontrollably. My husband quickly took him out and called the staff. None of them made a big deal about it and my baby’s face was marked for a few weeks after. What I’m trying to say is the consequences could’ve been tragic, there needs to be more education on the use of these heaters, parents need to be informed of the potential dangers.

That sounds alarming. Did you report it to PALs? I totally agree and there should be more awareness about it. I hope your child was okay. It sounds quite dangerous.

Hi, no unfortunately I didn’t report it because it was never given any importance and I had just had a Caesarean section and was totally side-tracked with it. I should’ve reported it now that I think about it more and more. My baby is now 2 and he seems fine, scar is gone. I did some research into this and there are scholarly articles highlighting the dangers of them, unfortunately there were even deaths due to over-heating of these machines. Why are they still being used?

They put my son in one of these. I had lost lots of blood, had an episiotomy and stitches and had an epidural so I physically couldn’t get out of bed to get him out when he stopped breathing due to being overheated and they weren’t responding to the bedside buzzer. I literally had to flop out of bed and grab my son and then sit in the wheelchair so I could get him to start breathing again.

He’s 3 now, absolutely healthy and perfect but I filed a report to PALS and nothing came of it, because “nothing was on file”.

Oh no! That is absolutely horrible, I’m so sorry you went through this ordeal, it’s horrifying to know the level of negligence by staff. That could’ve been extremely tragic if it wasn’t for your maternal instincts, why isn’t this being highlighted more? How many deaths will it take to gain some publicity? It’s disgusting!! My sister is due in October, I will be advising her to keep her baby away from these death machines!

That's weird. I didn't give birth in the UK but they are routinely used where I live, people even buy them for at home (which I think is overkill!) but they are only used on a changing table/open cushion type place where the baby can very clearly not be left alone. The alarm sounds if the device is accidentally left on for too long - my roommate left it on after changing her baby once (he was not under it).

It seems wrong to me that babies are being put under these heaters and left unsupervised?

I'm not sure who to contact but I hope others are of more help as what you are saying is really concerning. It needs to be in the papers. On social media. Taken to MPs (hopefully one of them will bring it up in parliament or whatever) but it needs to be brought to light for change to occur. It's only now the NHS are understanding having women who miscarry and women who are pregnant in the same room is not right. I'm sure that was only due to someone bringing it up on Twitter.