A 4-month-old baby in Singapore was previously reported to have suffocated to death back in 2021 after falling into a gap between the bed and the wall, and her death had been ruled a misadventure by the state coroner Adam Nahkoda in his findings released earlier this week, according to Channel NewsAsia.
What happened?
At the time of the tragedy, the baby was just learning how to flip, with her parents saying that previously, she couldn’t hold up her head or continuously flip herself.
The baby usually slept on a mattress that was laid on her parent’s bed in the corner of the room beside the wall, and there was a gap that measured about 22cm wide and 25 cm deep between the bed and the wall.
The baby slept on the mattress beside the gap until she was 2 months old, and her mother then shifted it to prevent the child from falling into it, as well as placing a pillow on the floor in case the baby fell down.
From 19 December 2021 to 20 December 2021, in the evening, the mother was video calling the baby’s father while he was working.
She then fell asleep with her baby with the video call still ongoing. Then at about 2 am or 3 am, the baby’s father checked on the video feed and saw that the baby was still on the mattress facing upwards before he then fell asleep at his workplace at about 4 am.
The baby then cried at about 5 am and it woke the mother up, and she then went to make a bottle of milk for the baby before going back to sleep and leaving the baby to drink from the milk bottle herself.
She later woke up about an hour later at about 6 am and realised the baby was no longer on the mattress, and saw the baby’s legs pointing upwards from the gap.
She then looked into the gap and saw her baby facing downwards towards the bed, and pulled her out, with the baby being non-responsive after being pulled out.
The baby’s eyes were also closed and she had dried milk coming out of her nose, and the mother then cried for help and a tenant who lived with them rushed over to see what happened.
The tenant noticed that the baby was cold, and wanted to make sure that she was not choking on anything by hitting her on the back.
When it didn’t work, he performed CPR on the child before paramedics arrived at the scene at about 6.30 am and conveyed the baby to Ng Teng Fong Hospital, but it was too late and she was pronounced dead at 7.44 am, with the cause of death later determined to be positional asphyxia, which is when a person cannot breathe because of their airways being blocked due to their body positioning.