It is a truly horrific tragedy.
Brisbane baby girl dies days after twin sister died at Sunnybank Hills home:
A second baby girl who was found unresponsive in a Brisbane home has died in hospital overnight.
Police were called to the Sunnybank Hills home on Wednesday morning.
One of the six-week-old twins was declared dead at the scene.
The second girl was taken to hospital in a critical condition on Wednesday morning.
Police said preliminary investigations suggested the newborns had been sleeping together throughout the night.
Bed-sharing is a known risk factor for suffocation and sudden infant death syndrome. Every major pediatric health organization warns against it … except many breastfeeding organizations. Why? Apparently it’s more important to make breastfeeding easy than to ensure infants are safe.
Every major pediatric health organization warns against it … except many breastfeeding organizations.
Consider Dr. Melissa Bartick’s irresponsible and hypocritical opinion piece in Maternal Child Nutrition, Babies in boxes and the missing links on safe sleep: Human evolution and cultural revolution. Bartick promotes the deadly practice of co-sleeping in order to support breastfeeding. Apparently she is blind to the absurdity of letting babies die in order to breastfeed them.
Recommendations enforcing separate sleep are based on 20th century Euro‐American social norms for solitary infant sleep and scheduled feedings via bottles of cow’s milk‐based formula, in contrast to breastsleeping, an evolutionary adaptation facilitating the survival of mammalian infants for millennia. Interventions that aim to prevent bedsharing, such as the cardboard baby box, fail to consider the implications of evolutionary biology or of ethnocentrism in sleep guidance…
Seriously? How natural is the soft surface of a manufactured mattress? When in nature did bedding that can cover babies‘ heads evolve? If even the Bible mentions a bed-sharing death from a mother rolling onto an infant how is that fear based on 20th Century Euro-American norms?
La Leche League promotes a deadly policy of flat out denial:
It can be hard to continue your breastfeeding relationship if you are told you are not safe for your baby for a full third of the day! LLL believes there are many safe sleep options available to parents with infants. Education and accurate information are the keys to unlocking Sweet Sleep solutions!
Really, La Leche League? How sweet is a dead baby? Are two dead babies even sweeter?
The parents of the twins are “in a dark place.” It’s difficult to comprehend the grief, anguish and self-blame the parents will carry for the rest of their lives.
In an interview with the Courier Mail, their father revealed that the couple is in a “dark place” and their 2-year-old son has been distraught, searching the house for his baby sisters.
“We’re in a very dark place. But we have to try to keep going for our other children,” the father said.
“Our daughter is almost five, we told her the truth. We didn’t say they had fallen asleep … we told her they had died.”
However, he added that his daughter still hasn’t fully comprehended what has happened yet.
The twins’ father, who is a chemical technician, revealed he and his wife understood the dangers of co-sleeping, but they were struggling with the sleep deprivation after the birth of their twins.
He added that they are “educated people” and that it was only the second time her wife had co-slept with their children.
My heart goes out to these parents. They never, ever thought their babies would die … but neither does anyone else who practices bed-sharing.
Thinking about bed-sharing with your precious baby? Think again!
