SIDS: Breastfeeding Mom Kills Baby While Drunk

 Jeanne Sager : on June 22, 2011

 

 

Imagine a mom's worst nightmare. She settles in to breastfeed her baby girl for the last time for the night, baby snuggled at the breast, happy and content. Then she falls asleep. When she wakes up, the baby's dead. Would you judge her? Now what if she had an entire bottle of wine in her system?

Kind of changes things, doesn't it? I really want to feel bad for Emma Hector, a British mom accused of killing her baby girl, Naomi, as she breastfed the 7-month-old in the family bed back in 2009.
It's one of those "there but for the grace of God go I" situations. I've slept with my daughter in my bed. I wasn't a dedicated co-sleeper by any means, but I did it at times because it was convenient. Because the smell of my infant was in and of itself intoxicating, I was so overcome with love that I couldn't be apart. Because some nights, I was so exhausted, it was just easier.
But then there's that bottle of wine that Emma sucked down. Hector's husband was said to have found their daughter face down and motionless, with blood in her mouth and her mother's breast covering her face. His wife was passed out cold. Drunk. Not only had she drank just about the full bottle, she'd had nothing to eat.
I'm going to go ahead and say it. A glass of wine, one mug of beer, when you're breastfeeding, and most of us will look the other way. Most pediatricians these days say there's no reason to pump and dump. But I've yet to meet a doc who'd suggest the best way to build up your milk supply is to chug that wine and skimp on the eats to boot. Just like pregnancy, breastfeeding requires a mom to keep baby in mind as she eats and imbibes throughout the day. Just from a sustenance level, Emma Hector did Naomi wrong.
Add to that the fact that every parenting book out there warns that alcohol plus co-sleeping equals a huge increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, and Emma Hector -- who has two other kids, one child older than Naomi, one born since her death -- knew the risks she was taking.
I'm all about "Moms need to support each other," but I just can't do it here. Emma Hector knew what she was doing was wrong. She did it anyway. Although an inquest has just determined they're unable to prove a direct linkage between Emma's actions and Naomi's death, I think the mom should be carried straight to the clink. She's culpable.
How about you? Was this something that could happen to any mom or was this a direct "Mom did wrong, Mom caused the child's death" case in your eyes? Is it criminal?
http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/122095/breastfeeding_mom_kills_baby_while

SIDS: Sleeping with your baby presents dangers

Diane Chun : January 28, 2011

 

Sometimes the greatest dangers for a newborn baby lurk right in the family home.

It's a sad truth brought into the spotlight after the recent deaths of two Gainesville babies, one 14 months old and the other just 6 months, who were each "co-sleeping" in the same bed with an adult family member.
Last February, the American Association of Pediatrics reported that infant deaths due to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed have quadrupled since 1984. Beds, cribs and couches have proven fatal for babies who were accidentally suffocated while sleeping.
Over the same period, the national organization's figures show, unexplained deaths from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, have gone down. The rate is now 0.57 deaths for every 1,000 live births.
Area pediatricians and child safety experts say there are steps parents can take to minimize the hidden household dangers that could put their young baby at risk.
New mothers who deliver at Shands at the University of Florida or North Florida Regional Medical Center's Women's Center receive information on these safety steps before they leave the hospital with their newborn. Here are five worth reviewing:
"Back to Sleep"
Dr. Maria Kelly, a pediatrician with Shands UF, puts the AAP "Back to Sleep" campaign at the top of her list of basics for new parents.
A generation ago, moms were told to put a baby to bed on his stomach. That can increase the risk of SIDS.
Instead, put the baby down for a nap or for the night on his back.
If your baby doesn't sleep well on his or her back, swaddle the baby "like a burrito" in a baby blanket, Kelly advises.
Save "tummy time" for times of the day when the baby is awake.
"Co-sleeping"
In some cultures, putting an infant to sleep in the parents' bed is a long-accepted tradition.
Supporters hold that bed-sharing promotes bonding, allows the parents to get more sleep and facilitates breastfeeding.
The American Academy of Pediatrics does encourage room-sharing (or co-sleeping on a separate surface) in its policy statement regarding SIDS prevention, but has come out against bed-sharing with small babies. Instead, AAP recommends putting the baby in a bassinet, crib or cradle close to the parents' bed in the same bedroom.
Safer sleep time
Kelly warns that "soft goods" in the baby's sleeping area can put them at risk. Blankets and other fluffy, loose items can cover your infant's head and block their airway.
Avoid using pillows, quilts, comforters, sheepskins, soft-padded crib bumpers and stuffed toys where your baby sleeps.
Put them down on a firm mattress in a safety-approved crib, not the sofa or the middle of your bed. Put them to bed in a one-piece sleeper to keep them warm without getting them overheated.
No bottle, please
Don't put a baby to bed with a bottle, Kelly advises. If they should choke, "they're too small to protect their own airway," she said.
And for you, no smoking. Smoking while pregnant will increase your baby's risk of SIDS. And tobacco smoke anywhere in the baby's environment is bad news for tiny lungs.
How about a pacifier?
Many parents want to discourage their kids from getting too attached to a pacifier. Many experts, however, think a pacifier is a good way to help a baby soothe himself at bedtime.
The AAP recommends that if you are breastfeeding, wait until the baby is at least a month old and then offer a pacifier only at sleep times. Don't reinsert the pacifier once your baby falls asleep.

Contact Diane Chun at 374-5041 or chund@gvillesun.com

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110128/ARTICLES/110129433/-1/entertainment?Title=Sleeping-with-your-baby-presents-dangers

SIDS: Danger of overlay

Nancy Fowler Larson

October 19, 2010 — The value of breast-feeding should be considered before advising mothers not to share their beds with their infants, according to a British study published online October 18 and in the November issue of Pediatrics.

Nearly half of all English infants sleep in a parent's bed at times; one fifth does so regularly during their first year. The practice has been linked to sudden infant death syndrome, and many professionals and organizations, including the American Pediatric Society, advise against it.
However, bed sharing is also known to support breast-feeding.
"Both cross-sectional epidemiological and sleep laboratory studies showed close links between the frequency and duration of breastfeeding and the practice of bed sharing," write Peter Blair, PhD, Community-Based Medicine and Social Medicine, University of Bristol, United Kingdom, and colleagues.
The researchers sought to further the knowledge about bed sharing and breast-feeding through a longitudinal, population-based study using data gathered in 1991 and 1992 for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. To that end, they examined bed-sharing and breast-feeding habits during 5 periods (0 - 2 months, 6 - 8 months, 17 - 20 months, 30 - 33 months, and 42 - 45 months) in 7447 children.
Patterns of bed sharing were broken down into 4 unique groups: parents who never shared their beds with infants (66%), those whose babies slept with them in their beds only in infancy (13%), those who shared their bed with a child only after the first year (15%), and parents who shared their beds consistently for 4 years (6%).
Bed-Sharing Associated With Breast-Feeding
The results showed that mothers who shared a bed with their newborns were better educated and of a higher socioeconomic status, and that those whose children routinely slept in their beds during the first 15 months of life reported a significantly greater incidence of breast-feeding, among other findings:

• all 3 categories of bed sharing had an important relationship with breast-feeding at 12 months (P < .001), whether the bed sharing occurred late (odds ratio [OR], 1.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.36 - 2.18), early (OR, 2.36; 95% CI, 1.87 - 2.97), or during the entire 4 years (OR, 5.29; 95% CI, 4.05 - 6.91);
• 29% of the mothers who slept with their infants at 0 to 2 months (251/872 mothers) had university degrees compared with 14% of mothers (888/6464) whose babies slept separately during that period (P < .0001); and
• the finding for education lessened for those who shared a bed with their 6- to 8-month-old-infants (17% vs 15%; P = .17) and there was a negative relationship with education for those sleeping with their 17- to 20-month-olds (11% vs 16%; P < .0001).

Because bed-sharing mothers of newborns were found to be better educated and more socioeconomically advantaged, their babies are at lower risk for sudden infant death syndrome because they will likely follow other infant safety guidelines, the researchers reasoned. Therefore, more lives could be saved if preventive messages focused on behaviors other than sharing a bed.
"Given the likely beneficial effects of bed sharing on breastfeeding rates and duration, risk reduction messages to prevent sudden infant deaths would be targeted more appropriately to unsafe infant care practices such as sleeping on sofas, bed sharing after the use of alcohol or drugs, or bed sharing by parents who smoke," the authors write.
Limitations to the study include the fact that using 5 time periods reduced the number of infants who could be studied (of the 14,062 mother–infant pairs on whom data was collected, only 53% [7447] provided information for all time points). In addition, most longitudinal studies have a larger dropout rate for socioeconomically disadvantaged participants — a situation that could skew the results toward those of higher socioeconomic status.
Regardless, the bottom line of the study results is a simple one: "Advice on whether bed sharing should be discouraged needs to take into account the important relationship with breastfeeding," the authors write.
The UK Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, and the University of Bristol provided core support for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths supported this specific study. The study authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Pediatrics. Published online October 18, 2010.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/730802

SIDS: Understanding and preventing SIDS

By Karen Garloch, McClatchy/Tribune News
3:21 p.m. CDT, September 29, 2010

Mysterious deaths of babies during sleep have been recorded since antiquity. But the term sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, wasn't coined until the 1960s, when it was declared a medical disorder. Some facts about SIDS:
What is SIDS?
Often called "crib death," SIDS is the sudden death of an infant under age 1 that remains unexplained after a thorough investigation, including autopsy, examination of the death scene and review of the medical history.ow is it diagnosed?
SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion. An autopsy is used to rule out other medical causes. Authorities rely on a death scene investigation to provide evidence of causes, such as suffocation, that aren't detectable by autopsy.

What causes SIDS?
Scientists don't know. There have been many theories over the years.
One in the 18th century focused on the possibility that an enlarged thymus gland produced a mass of tissue at the back of the neck that could close off the baby's windpipe. This and other theories, such as allergies to milk and "poor mothering," were discarded over the years.
Since the early 19th century, some experts theorized that infants who died unexpectedly had "faulty constitutions," according to the textbook "Crib Death."
Early researchers also considered the possibility that sleep apnea (short periods of not breathing during sleep) or other abnormalities of breathing control were related to unexpected infant deaths.
In 1972, the journal Pediatrics published an article by Dr. Alfred Steinschneider, who theorized SIDS was caused by apnea and that the syndrome could also be genetic. His study referred to a "Mrs. H" who lost five children to SIDS. His work was discredited in 1995 when a jury convicted Waneta Hoyt — Mrs. H — of killing all five of her children.
Today, many experts espouse the "triple-risk" theory, believing SIDS can result when three factors come together in a sort of perfect storm. The factors are: a critical period in the baby's development, an underlying vulnerability and an outside stressor, such as sleeping face down or becoming entangled in soft bedding.
The critical stage is the first six months of life, when babies' immune, cardiovascular and respiratory systems are developing. Experts disagree on what the vulnerabilities might be. But some ideas are respiratory infections, genetic susceptibility and defects in the brain stem.

The most recent finding, announced in February, suggested that brain stems of SIDS babies contain low levels of the hormone serotonin, which controls vital functions during sleep, such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers from Children's Hospital Boston think this would explain why some infants are at risk.
Infants in certain sleep environments are more likely to re-breathe exhaled carbon dioxide, which can be lethal. Normally, babies in that situation would turn their heads to get fresh air. But babies who die of SIDS don't respond or cannot wake up when they experience breathing difficulty.
Lessening risk
SIDS deaths have been considered unpredictable and unpreventable. But it has become clear over the years that certain factors put infants at higher risk.
They include: stomach- and side-sleeping; maternal smoking or drug use during pregnancy; secondhand smoke; overheating; soft sleeping surfaces; bed-sharing; little or no prenatal care; prematurity or low birth weight; and being male, African-American or Native American.
In 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that babies sleep on their backs. After a nationwide "Back to Sleep" campaign launched in 1994, SIDS deaths nationally dropped about 50 percent.
By 2005, the academy for the first time warned parents against bringing infants into their adult beds. That recommendation remains controversial because many parents' groups support bed-sharing, in conjunction with breast-feeding, as a way for parents to bond with and stimulate their babies. Some parents also believe that if they're sleeping with or near their babies, they're more likely to wake up if the babies stop breathing.
After years of looking for other causes and trying to protect parents from unnecessary guilt, researchers have returned to the idea that many deaths previously ruled SIDS could, in fact, have resulted from unintentional suffocation.
Today, many SIDS experts are intent on identifying and reclassifying potentially preventable suffocation deaths so that researchers can focus on finding the medical cause of remaining unexplained infant deaths.
How should you put your baby to bed?
•Place the baby's feet at the foot of the crib.
•Lay the baby on his or her back.
•The blanket should be a thin one that goes no higher than the infant's armpits and be tucked under the mattress, says nurse educator Lisa Vallee of Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital in Charlotte, N.C.
Causes of death in infants
The most current data available from U.S. vital statistics reports is from 2004. It shows that the most common causes of death per 100,000 infants born in the U.S. are:
•Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (137 per 100,000)
•Disorders related to early birth and low birth weight (112 per 100,000)
•Sudden infant death syndrome (55 per 100,000)
•Newborns affected by mother's complications during pregnancy (42 per 100,000)
•Accidents, unintentional injuries (26 per 100,000)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sc-health-0929-sids-20100929,0,4924350,full.story

SIDS: Breastfeeding baby is healthiest option for new moms

September 03, 2010
By Deborah McBain, RN, Henry Ford Health System
Mothers and moms-to-be may debate the pros and cons of cloth versus disposable, but one choice there’s no debate about: whether mother’s milk or formula is the best for babies.The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends babies be fed only mother’s milk for the first six months and that they be breastfed for at least a year.Breastfeeding is beneficial in many ways. It:• provides children with the best nutrition. Breast milk is easier for babies to digest, and it’s easier for the babies to absorb the calcium and iron.• provides natural protection against illness, like ear aches, stomach aches and upper respiratory viruses. Breastfeeding also decreases a child’s risk of bacterial meningitis and urinary infections.• lowers a baby’s risk to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and of developing chronic illnesses, like diabetes and Crohn’s disease.• improves a baby’s brain development.• decreases the incidence of obesity. Along with the health benefits, breastfeeding helps babies develop a sense of security and promotes the bonding between mother and child.There are also benefits to the mother:• They have less risk of developing breast cancer at an early age and a reduced risk of ovarian cancer.• Breast milk is economical.• Breastfeeding your baby helps to shrink the uterus back to its normal size and lessens bleeding after delivery.• It helps them return to their pre-pregnancy weight more quickly. Babies will want to be fed about every two to three hours, and will eat eight to 12 times within a 24-hour period. Tell the pediatrician if the baby’s stool is hard and dry, as that may indicate he or she isn’t getting enough milk.Women who are breastfeeding should limit their caffeine intake and avoid alcohol and smoking.Some medications may be taken, but should be discussed with the mother’s health care provider.Nursing mothers who take medications should do so immediately after nursing to lessen the amount that is in the breast milk at the next feeding.Sometimes the mother’s breasts will swell and be uncomfortable. Letting the baby empty the breasts will help.Sore nipples are also a common complaint.Changing the baby’s position at each feeding may help, along with allowing the nipples to air dry following each feeding.Because soap is drying, use only water to wash nipples. If the soreness persists more than a few days, talk to your health care provider.Sometimes a milk duct will clog. If this happens, a portion of the breast will feel hard. Let the baby nurse long enough to empty the breast, and massage the area as he or she is nursing.Symptoms that resemble the flu, combined with a red area on the breast, may indicate an infection in the breast tissue.This infection can be passed on to the baby, but the mother should contact her health care provider, who may prescribe antibiotics. It is not necessary to discontinue nursing.It is possible to continue to breastfeed even after returning to work or school. Many women choose to pump milk from their breasts so it can be fed to the baby when they’re not home.Pumped (or expressed) breast milk can be stored in a refrigerator for eight days.Cold breast milk can be safely stored in the refrigerator’s freezer for two weeks or for three months in a frost-free freezer.If pumping at work, place the container with the milk in a cooler with a freezer pack.When warming the milk, do not heat it in the microwave or on the stove. Instead, thaw in the refrigerator overnight then place the container in a cup of warm water for a few minutes. Throw away whatever milk the baby doesn’t finish.It may take some time for the baby to become accustomed to using a bottle.Try it when he or she first wakes up by placing it gently on the bottom lip. If the baby won’t take it wait for another feeding and try again. Do not try to force him or her to take the bottle.When it comes time to wean the baby from breast milk, that should be done slowly as well. Replace one feeding with formula, baby food or cow’s milk, depending on the child’s age and the pediatrician’s advice, and then wait a few days before doing it again. It may take a few weeks for the breast milk to dry up.
Deborah McBain, R.N., is a certified nurse midwife at the Henry Ford Medical Center-Fairlane in Dearborn.
http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2010/09/03/life/doc4c812edc36a4a446333565.txt