A woman who was feeding her newborn baby girl at night, has ended up doing the little child irreparable harm in the process.
Illustrative photo
A newborn baby girl has died after her mum accidentally fell asleep while feeding her in the middle of the night, Metro UK reports.
The girl, who was just 25-days-old at the time, had woken her parents up for a feed at 3:30am.
According to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, she then died in her mother’s arms as the two fell asleep together while sitting up in bed.
HM Coroner Anne Pember told the inquest in Northampton: ‘This is a very sad and untimely death, and the mother had no intention of falling asleep.’
The inquest heard that, in the days before her death, the baby girl became ‘whingy and clingy’ and would cry whenever she was put down.
She slept in a cot next to her parents’ bed, and on the night in question in July 2016 she woke them up three times for feeding.
Her mother said: ‘At around 3.30am I carried her to bed with me. I sat up and held her in my arms while I fed her. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.’
When she woke up it was already 7.15am, and the baby was lying face-down on the mattress next to her hip.
The terrified parents called 999, and paramedics arrived within minutes – but they said that the girl had died some time before.
Concluding, the coroner said: ‘She was found lying on her front on the mattress. A post-mortem found evidence that her airway had been blocked.
‘This was an accidental death and the mother had no intention of falling asleep.
‘Very often, parents will carry their newborn babies to bed with no consequences, but the public must know about the dangers of holding babies in this way.’