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December 9, 2009

Baby Dies Aboard United Airways Flight: A Response

In our eagerness to assign blame, mothers usually bear the brunt of tragedies like this.

Elrena Evans

My mind is still reeling from the news that a 4-week-old infant was unable to be resuscitated after the baby stopped breathing on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Kuwait. The plane made an emergency landing in London, but the child could not be revived.

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"Mom smothers baby breastfeeding on jet," the headline blared when I went to check my e-mail last Thursday. I quickly closed my laptop before my daughter could wander over and start reading over my shoulder. But I went back online later to read more, driven by the same compulsion that makes us slow our cars and look out the window when we pass an accident. All morning the headlines stuck in my brain as I cleaned the house, played with my children, and nursed my own baby.

Breastfeeding isn't the culprit, experts were quick to state (to my relief) when the news hit the press. Dr. Ruth Lawrence, past president and founder of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, was very clear in her interview with ABC News: "Breastfeeding doesn't smother babies." Instead, Lawrence pointed to the fact that the mother fell asleep while nursing.

Janet Fyle of the Royal College of Midwives agrees that breastfeeding shouldn't be blamed. The true culprit, she says, are the airplane seats itself, because they make it so easy to fall asleep. "It's not breastfeeding that's the problem," Fyle stated. "It's the chair.''

Pardon me for quarreling with the experts, but this mother is being blamed for falling asleep? On a transatlantic flight? With a 4-week-old?

What nursing mother hasn't fallen asleep while nursing her child? Back before the days of studies and guidelines and research and panels, back when the experts were primarily mothers, most women probably fell asleep every night while nursing their children. Many still do. But we're not supposed to, because sleeping while holding a baby is taboo right now, along with letting babies sleep on their stomachs, or using forward-facing car seats, or feeding babies honey before age one.

We have expert-approved guidelines for every possible aspect of child-rearing, and I appreciate the insight afforded by such guidelines. But I wonder if they make it easier to blame parents when the unthinkable happens. The recommendations are ever-increasing and ever-changing, and that's not even getting into the fact that on most issues, experts disagree. Parents are stumbling under the weight of all these "shoulds," and when tragedy strikes, these recommendations morph into pointing fingers of accusation.

A mother was nursing her baby on an airplane and fell asleep. When she woke up, the child wasn't breathing. Now she's facing inquiries and investigations, in addition to suffering a tragedy that my brain will short-circuit on before it even tries to imagine.

Bloggers have been positing theories of their own. Maybe the baby was covered by a blanket. Or the baby was too young to be flying in the first place. The mother shouldn't have taken that trip/fallen asleep/nursed her child. The passengers around her should have noticed sooner/woken her up/been able to save the baby. All these opinions hold a common thread: someone, something, has to be blamed.

But is it possible there's no blame to be had? Sometimes people die when they are very, very tiny — and sometimes no one is to blame. If you can't handle that, it's because you weren't supposed to. Human beings were created to live eternally; our minds and our hearts were never designed to handle the unspeakable loss that is death. It goes against the very fabric of who we are, and who we were created to be.

Reeling from this pain that we were never intended to know, we look for a source of blame — as if having a cause, a culprit, could somehow make it better. And when a baby dies, the person who carries the brunt of that blame, deservedly or not, is the mother.

Somewhere, right now, a woman is mourning the loss of her child. Several women, actually, facing the pain of cancer or SIDS or a tragic accident. I pray for each and every one of these women, that our God of mercy would be their comfort and source of hope. And I pray that they will be surrounded by people who will hold them, love them, and grieve with them, people whose first thoughts will be to help the mothers, before assuming they are to blame.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on December 9, 2009 9:37 AM

Comments

Thank you. Our world's obsession with blame is as tragic as as the tragedies we try to erase by assigning blame. Instead of erasing grief by pointing blame, we instead compound it. This is a wonderfully written post worthy of printing and saving for future use. We ought only to greive with and for this woman and those who knew and loved this dear child, nothing else.

Posted By: Karl Bastian | December 9, 2009 11:23 AM

While I certainly agree that we should be grieving, not blaming, this line really threw me for a loop:

The true culprit, she says, are the airplane seats itself, because they make it so easy to fall asleep.

Easy to fall asleep in an airline seat? She's got to be kidding.

Posted By: Anonymous | December 9, 2009 12:08 PM

I agree that we were created to live eternally; the moment sin entered the world, so did blame. Just read through the account in Genesis 3 - as soon as God finds Adam, Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent! The desire to blame someone is innate to our sinful human nature.

Posted By: Katie | December 9, 2009 12:17 PM

Thank you deeply for this.

Posted By: Julie | December 9, 2009 12:56 PM

The ABC article also sees fit to demonize sleep sharing/cosleeping. Which most of the world practices and from which babies do not generally die. Sometimes a tragedy is just a tradegy and doesn't need to be used to beat women over the head with guilt/shame.

Too many motherjudgers.

Posted By: Robyn | December 9, 2009 3:55 PM

I am very impressed with your insights and your compassion. Very well done.

Posted By: Carol | December 9, 2009 5:09 PM

Hurray for you refusing to get into the blame game. That poor mother needs to be loved and nurtured in this tragedy and not blamed.

I do agree with the earlier anonymous writer who commented on sleeping on an airplane. As a 100k per year flier I doubt anyone can get that comfortable in an economy seat!

Posted By: Dan Jackson | December 9, 2009 5:55 PM

Excellent points, and very well delivered. Great post, and a great reminder.

Posted By: Sam O'Neal | December 10, 2009 8:29 AM

This is certainly a tragedy for the mother, and it's horrible that on top of dealing with the loss of her precious girl, she is facing blame and judgment from others.

But regarding this line: " ... sleeping while holding a baby is taboo right now, along with letting babies sleep on their stomachs, or using forward-facing car seats, or feeding babies honey before age one," I would like to suggest that those taboos are in place because of a reason - presumably as the result of a similar tragedy another mother has faced. A friend of our family lost his 18-month-old grandson just a few months ago when the boy was napping in bed with his mom and got wrapped up and suffocated in the blanket as the mom slept. I'm sure she would now urge as many people as she could to err on the side of caution when sleeping around a young one.

Let's appreciate the heavy price other moms have paid in the past by learning from what they have been through and observing these types of guidelines.

Posted By: Carolina girl | December 10, 2009 1:55 PM

A girlfriend from High School accidentally rolled on and suffocated her infant son, the baby died. I always thought of that when my three children where young and because of that memory,I did not practice the family bed. I also knew a family who put thier babe to bed with a bottle, he choked on his milk, no one there to hear, he did not die but suffered brain damage. I did not put my babes to bed with a bottle. We can learn from others tradgedies. We can love and pray for those who experiance tradgedy, they don't need our judgement, they are racked with guilt as it is.

Posted By: sandi domes | December 16, 2009 2:18 AM

Janet Fyle of the Royal College of Midwives agrees that breastfeeding shouldn't be blamed. The true culprit, she says, are the airplane seats itself, because they make it so easy to fall asleep. "It's not breastfeeding that's the problem," Fyle stated. "It's the chair.''

---
This has got to be the most ludicrous statement in the entire article... and it certainly doesn't make breastfeeding advocates look very bright. Airline seats are about as uncomfortable as it gets, as anyone who has ever flown knows. And the discomfort increases when there's a screaming infant in the vicinity.

I agree with the author that blame doesn't need to be assigned here. But I'll also say that there are risks to falling asleep while holding an infant -- doesn't seem like it would take a rocket scientist to realize that infants need to be watched, especially if the environment is unfamiliar.
As a frequent flyer, I'd like to see a lot fewer babies on long-haul international flights and in business class -- both are places infants don't belong.

Posted By: Kathleen | December 16, 2009 12:50 PM

Most people with infants are given a seat on the bulkhead where there are bassinets in which to place their child. I used one when bringing a 22-month-old home from Kazakhstan. You do have to be quite forceful in insisting on such a seat; the Lufthansa folks were more than willing; the United Airlines people were something else entirely.

Posted By: Julia Duin | December 16, 2009 1:55 PM

Well, airlines should have special seats for pregnant women which would also provide them the privacy to breast-feed the baby.

Posted By: baie d'Açai | December 18, 2009 12:55 AM

Elrena,

Blaming the chair sounds stupid, but can you imagine the pressure this young mom - 4 wks postpartum - is under at the moment?

Sometimes things are just accidents. We live in a culture that is afraid of death. Things are regulated so that blame can be shifted.

Breastfeeding on airlines is an ongoing issue. Just fodder for the fire.

Well written :)

Posted By: Sarah Joy Albrecht | December 19, 2009 9:26 PM

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