Co sleeping seems like a more culturally acceptable explanation for a
death that is, by definition, one without an identified cause.

I imagine that a baby who is found smothered by a pillow in a crib would
be considered "a death by suffocation caused by a pillow" yet I imagine
that a baby smothered by a pillow in the adult's bed would be more
likely to be labelled as "suffocation by a pillow due to co-sleeping"
and notched up as another co-sleeping death. So instead of blaming the
pillow equally in both cases we place undue   emphasis on the family
bed, and fail to emphasise the risks if the death occurs in a crib. It
seems that as a culture we are more accepting (or should that be
expecting) of human error than we are about a failure of a product or
setting that we have come to believe are necessary and irreplaceable.
Apply this to the formula industry - we can't question the validity of
formula too much because it is a product that we as a society have
become dependant on, so instead we turn our attention to penalise and
prosecute the people who do without the product and breastfeeding
instead, or who feel  harmed by breastfeeding in some way. We sentence
them when their baby's fail to thrive or die, but cover up the babies
who suffer because of  faulty formula or poor manufacturing and packing.
Women who conceive while using LAM are ridiculed for trusting it while
the woman who conceives while taking the Pill is generally regarded with
a fatalistic sympathy. We need infant death investigations with
attention to detail and standardised reporting and definitions that
minimise the chance they are pre-loaded with personal bias, much as we
need breastfeeding support without a preloaded bias based on personal or
observed experience.

Meg Kingsley

Lay Breastfeeding Supporter, Dubai UAE

E-Mail :  <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]

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