Posted on 12/04/2009 8:14:12 AM PST by tlb
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.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
How awful. But, if there is a woman breastfeeding anywhere I am, I always look away for her privacy. It’s just natural not to look I think.
Having your child die is about as bad as it gets and I can’t imagine how someone could even stay sane if it was their fault. Terrible. Saddening. Wish I hadn’t read this.
Total nightmare...
That’s uncool. Please have the admin remove this... better if you do it yourself...
To be honest, I just don’t see how it would be possible to fall asleep in an airline seat while breast feeding a baby and smother it.
Sometimes babies have been smothered by rolling on top of them in bed, or by accidentally covering them with a pillow. Was she using an airline pillow when this happened?
I just find it very hard to visualize what might have caused this. Not an accusation; it just seems very puzzling to me, as well as tragic.
Tis’ life, these things happen you know, tragic yes, but it happens, I have seen cows lay down and smother their calves, I have seen sows do the same. It is sad and tragic for this to happen to a human being, but sometimes bad things happen. God willing the sun will rise the next day and life will go on.
My payers to the unfortunate mother.
That picture was in the national papers yesterday and they showed it on fox news.
Yes, but posting it in reference to a mother accidentally smothering her child on a flight.... is in very bad taste.
When my wife opens her blouse... she gets my undivided attention :)
maybe the baby was smothered by cloths and blankets that were deployed to maintain “privacy” and to keep flight attendents from complaining about the mother breastfeeding “out in the open”.
We had a thread a month or so ago about a woman who discretely fed her baby, but didn’t throw a blanket over her, while on the airplane, and a stewardess forced her to stop feeding.
A lot of people here said the woman was wrong, and should put the baby under a blanket so “they wouldn’t be offended” by seeing a woman’s breast.
THis might be the reason NOT to do that.
The “No Breastfeeding in Public” Nazis just added more evidence to their stupid (bowel) movement.
Oh my God....one of my worst nightmares.
When my little ones have slept with us I always wake up all the time fearing this...even now my 3 year old gets up under me and I wake up panicked
I’m 6’5” and 235
my oldest daughter now 21 was a 2 pound preemie and would only sleep over 45 minutes at a time tucked under me...man...I would put pillows to bracket me and just cat nap all night.
..not meaning to break faggy and all (slaps self and puts on aqua velva)
Yes, that could be. Using a shawl with breathing holes would be OK, but maybe she used a tight blanket.
What a sick society we have, where there is plentiful pornography and sex all over the place, but feeding a baby in public is not tolerated.
I once got into a scholarly discussion of why in the middle ages it was thought proper to portray the Virgin Mary breast feeding the Infant Jesus in religious paintings. But then something happened around the time of the Reformation, and that sort of portrayal has never since been seen as a normal convention in religious art, either Protestant or Catholic.
Things are sometimes not what seems obvious. I have been reading horror stories about children’s immunizations which could be the main reason for SIDS as well as a variety of other issues. The baby may have even been given a flu shot that may have caused this. The mom will probably never know if it were something else that her baby died from.
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