Mother Smothers Baby While Breast-Feeding On Flight

LONDON — A breast-feeding mother accidentally smothered her four-week old child aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Kuwait, a British tabloid reported Tuesday.

The Sun newspaper said that the mother, who it said was a 29-year-old Egyptian-born woman, fell asleep as she breast-fed on the jet and awoke to find that the child had been smothered. The paper said the plane was diverted to London's Heathrow in an attempt to save the baby's life.

The paper cited an unnamed police source in its reporting. Scotland Yard confirmed that a United Airlines plane had been diverted to Heathrow in late November after reports that a four-week-old girl was in distress. The police said in a statement that the baby was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead. It added that an autopsy had been performed, but the results were still pending.

"The death is being treated as unexplained and the Child Abuse Investigation Team is investigating the circumstances," the statement said.

Scotland Yard did not go into further detail, although Britain's Press Association news agency reported that such investigations were standard practice. A police spokesman declined comment when asked about the child's mother, although he noted that there had been no arrests. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.

United Airlines spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said that Flight 982, a Boeing 777 flying from Washington's Dulles Airport to Kuwait City, was diverted to London on Nov. 25 because of what she said was an ill passenger. A doctor aboard the flight helped while the plane was still in the air, Urbanski said.

Once the ground, local authorities took over, and Urbanski said she had no information about what happened to the passenger next, although the flight later proceeded to Kuwait.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that sharing a bed or sleeping with an infant can be hazardous under certain conditions.

___

AP Airlines Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Comments

[collettethehedgehog]

04:36 PM on 02/27/2010

I'm calling BS on this. I'm betting the baby was drugged. I've been on flights where FA have TOLD mothers to drug their babies. MY reply was always the chance of aphyxia makes that suggestion incredibly dangerous-­you'd better pray your words dont kill an infant someday. I was on a flight where the mother was Kuwaiti and she took something to sleep. I was shocked since I NEVER slept on a long haul flights with my kids. She had a baby about 6 mos who did not wake in the whole 11 hour flight-ot even when we landed and the mother put him in the stroller. When I asked if he was OK she told me she gave him medicine to sleep and "everybody­" did it.

[MarsAmbassador]

03:15 PM on 02/26/2010

And this is why women shouldn't breast feed in public.

[redplanet]

05:17 PM on 02/26/2010

Because why? This statement has no logic to it. Women should breastfeed wherever they are and the baby needs to eat. Would you rather the child not eat? Should you be forced to eat in private? Or only hungry babies?

[MarsAmbassador]

07:18 AM on 02/27/2010

Not smart enough to understand sarcasm without having it spelled out for you?

[GwenD]

12:13 PM on 12/03/2009

Horribly sad.

[sheikwil4]

02:58 PM on 12/03/2009

Oh my, what a sad situation, I guess I probably would have smother my baby with these things I have. But wouldn't you check to make sure the baby is suckling ok so you would know they were not getting enough air. Plus some people are such idiots, about mother nursing in public, maybe this is why she should have use a bottle just for the flight. I am not blaming her, i do feel terrible for how she must feel.

[c1605]

11:50 AM on 12/03/2009

I am so sorry. This story is sad.

[c1605]

11:47 AM on 12/03/2009

smother smother smother. Can this article be more redundant? I did not know the exact meaning of the word and I was looking for a good synonym, but no, the report would not spare my dose of dictionary­.com, and my irritation to have visited another fast-comme­rcializing site outweights my sense of having learned anything.

[hartkid]

11:53 AM on 12/03/2009

Reminded me of the Smothers Brothers. Mom always smothered you with her breast. I mean best. Smothering Mothers is the name of a local band too. They are a duo who play air guitar and out each themselves in rap verses to a drum machine. It's brilliant stuff. As far as I know they never smothered any babies. But i don't know them well. I'm not like them. I don't rap.

[CRMurray]

11:34 AM on 12/03/2009

Wow this is sad.

[Oubastet]

10:59 AM on 12/03/2009

Anyone who has ever experience­d the first few months of a new baby can tell you that the exhaustion level is extraordin­ary, and dropping off into a cold, fast sleep isn't unusual. Anyone who has ever breastfed can also probably tell you that doing so in a public place usually means keeping the baby discreetly tucked to the side and out of sight... which could mean a position that -- if paired with sleepiness and a wrong angle, or larger breasts -- could lead to something like this.

There's no foul play involved and no poor parenting. This is simply a tragedy.

[scarletxoxoxo]

10:02 AM on 12/03/2009

I fell bad for that woman and her baby.

[scarletxoxoxo]

10:03 AM on 12/03/2009

feel:(

[ImaLibDem]

09:38 AM on 12/03/2009

How does a mother allow herself to go to sleep holding a 4 week old baby? Who was in the next seat and the attendants­, where were they? On break, or distracted by their laptops? Heck, I stayed awake watching newborn, sleeping puppies breathe. This is incredibly sad, not SIDS.

[aheller]

02:40 PM on 12/03/2009

A new mother is in a constant state of deep exhaustion and sleep deprivatio­n. It's easy to fall asleep when every cell in your body is screaming for rest. The person in the next seat was probably someone who felt uncomforta­ble having a woman breastfeed next to him/her, which probably caused the mother to feel the need to cover the baby from view (a sad reality in this weird culture that sees the natural feeding of our offspring to be offensive)­. The attendants would be of no use since this kind of accident woud hapen very fast, and the attendents are the ones who most want breastfeed­ing mothers to cover up. I hope that answers your questions. This is very very sad for the mother. I can;t imagine what she must be going through.

[lantanatx]

08:37 AM on 12/03/2009

So sad. SIDS is a very real possibilit­y here. Low O2 levels increase the risk.

As a former breastfeed­ing mother I can also say that attempting to nurse without adequate room and supporting pillows is very difficult especially with a small infant. I can't imagine how difficult it would be in an airline coach seat. Especially if the mother is larger or large breasted. It only takes a few moments of obstructed breathing and if the reflex to gasp doesn't kick in then the baby dies. Exhausted parents CAN fall asleep so soundly in just an instant, that you wouldn't be able to feel if a 4-week infant even attempted to struggle. If the infant was asleep when the breathing obstructio­n occurred it may not have struggled at all.

[land2341]

04:56 PM on 12/03/2009

Especially­, flying the mother was probably jetlagged and beyond exhausted. This is a tragedy.

[Cassandrawept]

07:05 AM on 12/03/2009

Babies have very small noses. But it's possible the child died of "crib death" rather than being smothered. Aircraft air has lower levels of oxygen then ground level air. A sad happenstan­ce.

[longfeltwant]

12:09 PM on 12/03/2009

True, true, and very sad.

Also: "than".

[farmerlady]

06:10 AM on 12/03/2009

It appears that the only thing "newsworth­y" about the unfortunat­e event is that it happened mid-flight­. Otherwise, mothers falling asleep on young infants is something that, sadly, happens rather often.

And for all of you who think she was in the States to produce an anchor child.....­please think twice. I think if she was having a baby as a citizenshi­p ploy she would have remained in the States while her case was being processed, which can take years. I believe it"s much more likely, as Eqyptians are very family orientated­, that she was flying back home to show the month old baby off to her family members and stay with her own mother for a while. How tragic that her family will never see the little girl.

[aheller]

02:45 PM on 12/03/2009

You have your facts wrong. Mothers do not fall asleep on young infants "often" at all. In 2000, the total number infant deaths due to suffocatio­n in an adult bed was 18. The number of SIDS deaths alone in a crib was 2,523.

[MaryfromIL]

04:21 AM on 12/03/2009

My younger son had one of those heart and breathing monitors until he was 6 months old. I came upstairs and my husband was sleeping while the monitor was going off loudly. Luckily, I was able to shake the baby out of the spell.

Many parents are sleep deprived for months with a newborn. This baby in the story was only 4 weeks old. I nursed while my older son slept, it kept me slightly aware. But I never put the child between my husband and I, because he was such a heavy sleeper.

[Scriobhaim]

03:52 AM on 12/03/2009

Curiously, if America had, as it ought to have, dropped its utterly absurd provision that goes "come and drop your baby in America and it's an American", that Egyptian baby would be alive today. It's way past time to toss out this totally unnecessar­y and eminently manipulate­-able law.

[pangursperson]

05:33 AM on 12/03/2009

There's a vast abyss of logic between this tragedy and your conclusion­.

[Tblack]

08:17 AM on 12/03/2009

Your reading comprehens­ion scores on your SATs must be in the teens.
In fact I don't think you throughly read the article.
You're excused.

[medicontheedge]

03:25 AM on 12/03/2009

infanticid­e of female, ie;undesir­able, babies is more common than you think in cultures that denigrate women...

[skantea]

07:42 AM on 12/03/2009

Uh, I'm pretty jaded myself, but this comment seems extra paranoid about humanity.
Even i it was an unconsciou­s desire, it can't be proven so why take it there?

[medicontheedge]

01:57 PM on 12/03/2009

This is a sad, but true, fact....