azathoth777
08-11-2006, 08:13 PM
Carlos Franco didn't live long enough to see his first sunrise.
Only hours old, the infant apparently suffocated after slipping between his sleeping parents in a shared bed at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, authorities said Wednesday.
The child's death over the weekend appears to have been an accident, but police said they were awaiting the Los Angeles County coroner's autopsy results for confirmation.
Carlos was born at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. After a feeding around midnight, the infant's parents, both juveniles from Long Beach whose identities were withheld, climbed into the hospital bed and went to sleep, police said.
"The father put the baby on a pillow on his chest," said Torrance Police Officer Dave Crespin. "Mom woke up at 2:30 a.m. and found the baby in between both of them. The baby was not breathing."
The child was pronounced dead at 3:38 a.m.
In a statement, the hospital said it has a policy and practice of cautioning new parents against sleeping in the bed with an infant "because of the risk to the baby of accidental death."
Citing patient confidentiality rules, spokeswoman Ann O'Brien said the hospital could not confirm whether it warned the parents about its policy.
Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services, said she could not comment on whether her agency would investigate the hospital to determine if it followed its policy.
The fatality was the third in as many days involving a Los Angeles County infant who died after sharing a bed with an adult, said Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the coroner.
On Friday, Daisy Lynn Harper of Los Angeles died 26 days after she was born. A day later, Dayanara Cervantes of La Puente, who was 46 days old, also died. Both infants died at home.
Bed sharing is being investigated as a factor in all three deaths, Harvey said. Investigators are awaiting lab tests before ruling on the causes, which could take six to eight weeks, he said.
These incidents underscore the dangers of infant bed sharing.
"The evidence is growing that bed sharing, as practiced in the United States and other Western countries, is more hazardous than the infant sleeping on a separate sleep surface," the American Academy of Pediatrics warned in a policy statement published last year.
Most U.S. hospitals do not permit infants to sleep in the bed with their parents, said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, director of the newborn intensive care unit at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center.
"This is definitely a no-no," he said. "Hospital beds are for one adult. There's hardly any space for a baby…. It doesn't take much to suffocate a newborn baby."
Yet discouraging infant bed sharing has been controversial, as some parents believe there are benefits.
One study published in the May issue of Pediatrics showed that bed sharing infants "engaged in more feeding and more infant-mother interactions than cot-sleep infants." Also, as breastfeeding has become more popular, studies show that bed sharing has increased in the U.S.
A separate study published in 2003 showed that the percentage of infants sharing an adult bed overnight jumped from 5.5% in 1993 to 12.8% in 2000.
Still, the safest place for a newborn infant to sleep is in a crib in the same room as the parents, said Dr. Angelika Rampal, assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital.
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I don't have children, but even I know not to do this.
Only hours old, the infant apparently suffocated after slipping between his sleeping parents in a shared bed at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, authorities said Wednesday.
The child's death over the weekend appears to have been an accident, but police said they were awaiting the Los Angeles County coroner's autopsy results for confirmation.
Carlos was born at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. After a feeding around midnight, the infant's parents, both juveniles from Long Beach whose identities were withheld, climbed into the hospital bed and went to sleep, police said.
"The father put the baby on a pillow on his chest," said Torrance Police Officer Dave Crespin. "Mom woke up at 2:30 a.m. and found the baby in between both of them. The baby was not breathing."
The child was pronounced dead at 3:38 a.m.
In a statement, the hospital said it has a policy and practice of cautioning new parents against sleeping in the bed with an infant "because of the risk to the baby of accidental death."
Citing patient confidentiality rules, spokeswoman Ann O'Brien said the hospital could not confirm whether it warned the parents about its policy.
Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services, said she could not comment on whether her agency would investigate the hospital to determine if it followed its policy.
The fatality was the third in as many days involving a Los Angeles County infant who died after sharing a bed with an adult, said Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the coroner.
On Friday, Daisy Lynn Harper of Los Angeles died 26 days after she was born. A day later, Dayanara Cervantes of La Puente, who was 46 days old, also died. Both infants died at home.
Bed sharing is being investigated as a factor in all three deaths, Harvey said. Investigators are awaiting lab tests before ruling on the causes, which could take six to eight weeks, he said.
These incidents underscore the dangers of infant bed sharing.
"The evidence is growing that bed sharing, as practiced in the United States and other Western countries, is more hazardous than the infant sleeping on a separate sleep surface," the American Academy of Pediatrics warned in a policy statement published last year.
Most U.S. hospitals do not permit infants to sleep in the bed with their parents, said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, director of the newborn intensive care unit at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center.
"This is definitely a no-no," he said. "Hospital beds are for one adult. There's hardly any space for a baby…. It doesn't take much to suffocate a newborn baby."
Yet discouraging infant bed sharing has been controversial, as some parents believe there are benefits.
One study published in the May issue of Pediatrics showed that bed sharing infants "engaged in more feeding and more infant-mother interactions than cot-sleep infants." Also, as breastfeeding has become more popular, studies show that bed sharing has increased in the U.S.
A separate study published in 2003 showed that the percentage of infants sharing an adult bed overnight jumped from 5.5% in 1993 to 12.8% in 2000.
Still, the safest place for a newborn infant to sleep is in a crib in the same room as the parents, said Dr. Angelika Rampal, assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital.
----------------------------
I don't have children, but even I know not to do this.