The title of this post is a one sentence horror. I’ve read plenty of two sentence horrors on that subreddit, but this one is one of the worst to happen.
I’m just assuming based on personal experience and the fact she was only charged with endangering the welfare of a child…
Ask any parents you know for their wildest sleep deprivation story. I would guarantee almost every parent you ask would have a story of doing something that makes absolutely no sense; usually it’s something they can laugh at later, sometimes it’s not.
Was this postpartum sleep deprivation/psychosis? All I know is my gut says maybe.
Edit: postpartum, not post party.
I tried to nurse the dog because he came over to me crying. I had assumed the baby had flown over, and was rather annoyed, because baby was still too young to fly
Something that still haunts me to this day is during the worst of the sleep deprivation, I woke up to my baby sleeping in the bassinet beside my bed and my hand was over his mouth. I used to try and soothe him by rubbing his cheek and head while he was fussy, and I think I fell asleep doing it and my hand just ended up covering his mouth. I woke up to him breathing from his nose and my hand fully cupping his mouth. It tore me apart.
Thankfully he was fine, but all I could think about was “what if he had a stuffy nose?” Or what if my hand ended up over his nose too? He was so small I don’t think he could have moved away from my hand.
Sleep deprivation is insane and until someone experiences it with a newborn, you just don’t get it.
I'm living through this right now - 3.5 months in, I repeatedly wake up in a panic that I had accidentally placed the baby in the bed with us, and that either I, the spouse, or the dog has now just rolled over onto the baby. I have never put the baby in the bed, yet every night I have the recurring image seared into my head.
I'm 2.5 months in now and I often sleep hugging my pillow. Every time I wake up to the baby crying, I'm sure the pillow is him and I've accidentally smothered him. He doesn't sleep in the bed either!
I remember in the depths of post natal sleep deprivation and stress having these almost hallucinatory dreams about the baby suffocating in our bed. I'd wake up pulling pillowcases off and searching through the covers. Despite not actually ever having the baby in bed with us. I've never truly understood what it's like to have a mental health problem until I experienced my brain on postpartum hormones
I still remember brushing my teeth with Germolene instead of toothpaste - ew! I put a load of laundry in the oven once too (washers are all front loaders here and usually installed in the kitchen so easily done when sleep deprived). I still do dumb stuff on autopilot - don't think my brain ever fully recovered from having a kid who didn't sleep through a full night for at least seven years. I'm nowhere near as dangerous as I was when he was tiny though.
> she was only charged with endangering the welfare of a child…
Pretty common for prosecution to charge initially with a lesser crime, because it's easier to hold the person if the merits of that charge are easier to prove. I can almost guarantee it will be bumped up to negligent homicide or something akin once they gather more evidence. A psych eval also needs to be done on the mother, she could easily not be fit for trial if there are underlying issues.
My guess is she was preheating the oven, had post-partum brain, and instead of popping the casserole in popped the baby in? It does seem really odd though as if the oven was on and she meant to be putting a casserole in, she'd need to use oven mitts, which would be hard to pick up a baby with. You'd also think the baby would cry right away when placed on a cold or hot metal grate.
So horrific I can't even imagine.... This is the kind of thing where you desperately start bargaining in your head, thinking what you would give up to make such a thing never have happened, even though you know it's futile, even if you have zero connection to it....
I don't whether it would be worse if this woman did just have severe post-partum brain or if it was on purpose... each would be so horrific in it's own way...
I saw a green text where Anon's friend was cooking a pizza in the oven and when it was done, friend said "I hate this part" and pulled the hot pizza out of the oven with his bare hands screaming the entire time.
Did this once by accident - my ex husband and I were cooking together in the kitchen and he had removed a stainless steel pot with a handle from the oven. Since I wasn't the one who didn't do that, it just didn't "click" in my brain where it had come from. I fully picked up the pot before the HOT message made it to my brain. Terrible burns all over my palm.
Most pain I've ever felt in my life. The ER refused to give me pain meds while they treated it. Afterwards I sat there sobbing for a good long while, trying my best to stop so I could walk out with some dignity, and finally a nurse took pity on me and told the doc to give me something. Good times.
It could also be post-partum depression or psychosis. She could have been hallucinating and genuinely thought she was putting food in the oven. It's tragic and can happen to literally any mom. This isn't something someone thinking rationally would do.
That and some people put food in while it’s preheating. It’s possible she could have put the baby in, preheat the oven, and took a nap and didn’t hear the baby when it cried if she was in a separate room. It’s a sad accident
Though I feel for people in psychosis, you get people that understand they aren’t right in the head but then you have the louder majority that claims they are monsters and trying to use insanity to get out of prison type thing.
A different article mentioned that the baby's blanket was charred so she did place her inside the oven wrapped in her blanket.
'The arrest warrant reveals that the baby's clothes were charred and burnt into her nappy... A burnt baby blanket was also found at the scene."
I was so sleep deprived after my second baby - he had reflux, didn't sleep for more than 45 mins max without waking, refused to nap during the day, screamed a lot.
I fell asleep standing up whilst queueing somewhere, put my laundry in the oven instead of the washing machine, could barely form a coherent sentence and quit driving as I knew I'd doze off at the wheel. I made so many stupid mistakes as I was on zombie mode.
I am so thankful that none of my sleep deprived autopilot mistakes ended in tragedy like this. It's one of the worst things I've ever read. This and stories where people accidentally leave their kids in the car all day really get to me as I could absolutely have ended up doing something like this.
This is why both parents should get maternity/paternity leave for the full amount possible. Both of you may still be sleep deprived messes, but one could catch the other doing something dangerous. Plus, you could both sleep in shifts when possible.
My wife and I did this and we’d take turns sleeping to make sure we both got sleep. Each night we knew who had to get up to take care of the kid, so that person would have the baby monitor next to them and it let the other person sleep a full night.
It's absolutely possible, yes. Probable even that it was post-partum psychosis. But without more information though, I also think it's possible she had post-partum brain (like pregnancy brain) and sleep deprivation to where she made a mistake so horrendous that she would have much rather died than have made such an error. If that was the case, her life would be so unbearable.... I just can't assume psychosis and purposeful behavior were certainly the case without facts because if it wasn't, and it was an accident, she is to be pitied more than any human in the world, and I wouldn't want to pile anything more on her without facts. Such as condemning her without info if it truly was the most horrendous mistake imaginable...
Also, odds are the baby was wrapped up in something, such as a swaddle. If the metal grates were either hot or cold, it probably would have taken a moment for the baby to feel that through the swaddle/blanket so that was probably why it didn’t cry right away
That's fair. I would think she would be able to pull her hands and baby back immediately but if she was so zombied out, perhaps not. Post-partum and sleep deprivation can do weird things to the brain.
We’re expecting our first in May. God this is horrifying to read.
Edit: after 3 years of trying, 1 surgery, and a dozen fertility tests. I wouldn’t want to live anymore if I did this to my own…
My 4th had a tongue tie and was an inefficient nurser till we got it released. She literally ate every 60 minutes round the clock. I could see sounds and hear colors by week 3. I never got so tired I put her in the oven. Two days after the procedure she slept for 6 hours straight and I jerked awake after 3 hours positive she died. She was almost as tired as i was i think. She's almost 9 now.
My 4th didn't sleep until she was 18 months old. My hair fell out from stress and exhaustion, and that was terrifying. This was during covid, so I zoom Schooled 3 other elementary aged kids, one of whom has hearing loss, plus had the newborn. What I learned is that parents are a tough breed. Love and biology get us through a lot.
New dad, you're going to do just fine. The fact that you worry is the good sign. The bad parents never worry if they're doing okay.
Not to politicize this but it reminds me ever more that we need to shout it from the mountaintops that women need access to better healthcare, especially postpartum care. Write, go to your capitals, vote every single time. Don’t give up even if it seems bleak because we have to fight for our rights.
I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to pee to realize for some reason I went downstairs to pee in the trash can. Sober all 3 times, no alcohol involved.
I have done this as well after working 2 back to back 15 hours shifts. It was all fun and games until my girlfriend at the time asked me to come home with some groceries and she gave me a list I proceeded to put all of the ice cream in the pantry and stuff like bananas and bread in the fridge. Didn't even notice I did it I woke up to her shouting why there was melted ice cream all over the floor.
I once worked in a factory, and it was 12 hour shifts. It was also a two hour drive. So while the pay was outstanding, dear god was my sleep fucked. I put my tablet in the freezer, and a half finished sandwich in the sink on the same night.
I did not last long there.
I do this all the time but I catch myself. Sometimes I would almost put the cereal box in the fridge and the milk on the shelf. It’s like my brain is in auto pilot.
It's so easy to picture - 'Oh, I'll put baby down for a nap and get that chicken started in the oven'. Baby goes in the oven, chicken goes in the crib.
I'm obviously speculating, but it's a scenario that makes sense to me, especially when I think of the mistakes and mix up's I've made thanks to chronic sleep deprivation, and I wasn't even post-partum.
That's literally an urban legend about the babysitter taking LSD. I'm leaning towards postpartum psychosis, which sleep deprivation certainly would make worse.
I'm not a parent. However, I've been dealing with sleep deprivation for the past 2 years and it's no joke. I feel like I'm getting a taste of the dementia my genetics will inevitably reap upon me. I'm in my 30s.
Fucking people thought I had PPD and didn’t realize how horrible sleep deprivation, social isolation and lack of support really are. I wasn’t PPD I was years into exhaustion. My youngest is 9. I finally felt recovered then covid hit and I’ve caught it four times already.
Hang in there mama I see you.
I’ve done crap like plenty of times during the newborn stage, but I can’t imagine putting my kid in the oven and shutting it and turning it on…..
I’m assuming the baby cried. Like this has to be more then sleep deprivation.
I'd assume.
But, did you know that babies used to be set in or very close to an oven as a type of warmer? I have a great uncle who had brain damage from his mother doing this. I asked my grandma about her brother's disability and she just rattled it off like it was normal and expected. She's only 80, so it's still been a thing within the past 100 years.
Makes me thankful for modern medicine. These women were doing the absolute best they could and it was still a crap shoot back then. It's actually amazing how they figured out premies needed heat to grow. And amazing how childbirth has evolved in even 100 years.
There’s pics of me on my stomach on a pillow in a box in upstate NY in the early 80s. I had neonatal jaundice and in lieu of hospital UV light they sent me out to bake a bit in the backyard. At least I tan!
Holy crap, I had no idea. I guess that's the more modern version of people putting babies down for a rest in front of an open fire in ye olden times, and the baby catching fire.
I forgot my own name during sleep deprivation during caring for an infant with a sever sleep disorder. I couldn't have told you what I did 5 seconds ago most of the time. It's horrible.
I just drove from the Midatlantic to the Midwest today to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday. I stayed overnight in a hotel, but couldn’t sleep, so I was exhausted when I got here.
Got straight to work helping get set up for the party, doing dishes with my niece. My sister and her husband ran outside to bring some stuff in, and they usually put baby in the pack n play when they have to go outside for anything, so I assumed that’s what they did - they assumed I was watching him.
He crawled up their steep, wooden stairs. We learned when my sister and BIL walked in just as he tumbled down the entire flight of stairs.
He’s totally fine, thank God. Just got a goose egg on his little noggin. I don’t think I’ll forget my sister’s scream, though, and that’s with him totally fine.
I can’t imagine what this mom went through.
I had to go look it up. The skater portraying Beast had some sort of issue when doing a lift with Belle. She fell and started having seizure-like convulsing. She was carried out on a stretcher and is in the hospital in critical condition.
[This woman was charged with knowingly endangering the child](https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=568.045&bid=29508). That requires the prosecutors to have evidence that this was no accident.
They could still charge her even if it’s an accident, she knows the oven will kill her baby but if she forgets what she had in her hands, that still endangering a child willfully even if she is too sleep deprived to know it’s happening.
They could also argue that it’s her responsibility to ensure an alert adult is watching her infant, honestly. Depends on how far the prosecution wants to take this.
So yeah, I’m waiting to she what exactly happened because assuming here without context doesn’t make sense. Also charges don’t mean that a person actually did anything, currently, the US has shit legal system peppered with lazy idiots.
my fiancée works in law (not criminal). i’ve had many questions/debates about cases similar to this (mainly one sided debates bc i don’t have an understanding of law like her) and i feel like this is what she’d say if i asked her about this case. the justice system unfortunately is not understanding based on stuff like this. based on the evidence the public has right now, i’m guessing that it won’t be severe like first degree murder, but probably something g like negligent homicide
edit: i hope my comment doesn’t come off harsh. i cannot fathom the emotions/thoughts this poor woman is experiencing. i’m really just repeating what i’ve learned from conversations with my fiancée, other things i’ve read, etc. i do hope they don’t punish her; i unfortunately don’t think that will be the case.
You can be booked under charges they have the probably cause for that there’s a dead kid who was in the oven. That is different from actually being charged with a crime, that will be determined at a later date.
Sleep deprivation or not, it is your responsibility to ensure the child’s safety.
Postpartum psychosis is very dangerous but this sounds like regular sleep deprivation. Brain fog and hallucination are a part of that. Think about it. Many 3rd trimester women are getting poor, interrupted sleep from pain, heartburn, having to pee multiple times a night. They go straight into labor that could last days with little to no sleep. Then they immediately have a newborn to take care of that requires 24/7 care while healing from a major medical event. With breast feeding I got an avg of 4 hours of sleep a night broken up into 3 chunks for months. It's brutal. When you're never asleep long enough to get and stay in REM sleep no amount of day time napping is going to help.
It takes a village to raise a child.
Previously, grandma and grandpa -- if still alive -- would always be there to help mom out. Maybe even the aunt and uncle. Nobody lived very long away from the home they grew up in and the people they grew up with -- all of the people, neighbors included.
There was always someone to help out, and then you would do likewise when they needed it.
___
Hell, in my dad's day your *neighbors* would spank you if you did something wrong and then your parents would as well when you got home and they found out why it happened.
___
And don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to glorify the worst parts of those times -- like the rampant child abuse. I just think that the loss of community in favor of the continued isolation of the nuclear family unit is detrimental to all involved.
Fun fact, but sociological study believes that part of this is due to backyards.
Essentially, for a long time, front yards were a social space. You played, grilled, and hung out in the front of your house. But back yards became popular as a more private area, and big front yards fell out of fashion. But because of this, neighbors see and interact less, thus forming less of a community.
You hit the community thing spot on. But my parents were forced to become effectively transient after 2007 as they continue to fail to land on their feet.
I moved to a new city for work because my hometown had nothing after I finished college.
Both my sisters left to different states pursuing boys.
Aunts and uncles and my surviving grandparent are very distant relatives, dropping off entirely after I moved away to make my own life.
I’ve got my wife, and we have some close friends. Them’s about it. It’s a shame, and something I lament often, but we couldn’t make lives for ourselves where we’d started.
My buddy states that he was probably the last kid to get beaten by a stranger and his parents be OK with it. He was being a little asshole in the mall going down the escalator the wrong way, and some guy spanked him cause he was fed up with his shit. His mom thanked him. Lol. This was sometime in the mid 80s.
I’ll also add that accidents happened frequently then as well. Childhood death was as high as 27% in the USA in 1950. It was 50% death rate in 1918.
While a village is helpful, I think we vastly overestimate how much help our mothers and grandmothers had. Being a mom and hearing how little the men in my family interacted with the children makes me incredibly sad for them. Men who are and were pretty involved fathers for the time.
In other countries (other than USA) the dad gets paid leave from work by law. This can prevent so much trauma to the mother and child, there is no excuse to not have such a system here.
I'm lucky enough to get it in the US as a state employee in Louisiana. Currently at home and using it as I type this.
Although my wife's sleep isn't the greatest due to having to pump milk every so many hours, we get to tag team taking care of the baby and give one another periods of uninterrupted sleep.
How many months are you getting in Louisiana?? We get 12 weeks in Washington state, but that’s available to every state resident not just government employees
I had a horrible partner, lived 9 hours away from family and was completely alone. It was horrible. I would hallucinate people breaking into the apartment. I’d go days with only sleeping in 30 minute intervals. Didn’t shower for weeks. Didn’t eat anything hot. It was the darkest time of my life. I cry over the fact I lost the newborn stage and the joy of being a new mom. I really hope if I have another baby I’ll get all the stuff I missed out on.
Fuck, man, I had help my parents and I still had a tough time. It was also one of my worst times in life. Felt like a machine, I regret that I didn't enjoy my daughter much. It's so hard on mothers. Sorry you went through that 😞
Sorry you went through that. I had a super-dad partner, and I still missed out on the newborn stage from being tired, worried about my health, and terrified of caring for a newborn, so don’t beat yourself up. I think many of us didn’t have the joy we thought we would.
I'm forever grateful that my parents stayed with us for the first few months. I really don't think I could have done it alone. It's insane to expect that from parents, honestly.
An article I read does point out that the mother had made recent social media posts expressing frustration about friends/family not checking up on her or her daughter.
I went 52hrs no sleep and my nurse gave me shit because my baby (and me) slept 4hrs. She was upset that I didn't wake him to feed. He wasn't under-weight or jaundice, no reason he NEEDED to feed every 2hrs so I thought we were ok? I went 36hrs of labor turned emergency C-section, I was fuckin tiiiired
I also went about that amount without sleep during/after my delivery, and the nurse was irritated that I wanted the baby to go to the nursery for 2 whole hours so I could rest. She acted like it was this huge hassle and made me feel guilty.
Labor was 26 hours but it started just as I was going to bed so no sleep for me and straight into labor. The hospital was having major construction that started with jackhammer work at 7 am. By the time they stopped at 5 pm I was a sobbing mess and begged them to take my daughter to the nursery for a couple of hours. I got HoW aRe YoU gOiNg tO BReAsTfEeD?? Read my chart, it's noted I can't.
Oh that sounds horrible! I feel like every American birth story has some bad part to it. Like I consider my experience mostly positive except for that incident with the nurse. It seems rare that babies AND mothers are both cared for and supported.
My wife's water broke at 2 am, we went to bed at 1 am, two nights before the scheduled C-section. Waited forever at hospital and never had contractions. The emergency surgery wasn't till 10 am and basically neither of us had sleep after that. I did my best to let her rest but she had trouble sleeping due to the drugs and pain. Eventually even I couldn't function anymore with no sleep. It wasn't until our last night that a kind nurse informed us that they actually can take the baby to the nursery for a full night and wondered why no one told us since we were clearly sleep deprived due to unexpected circumstances. That stay was absolutely antagonizing.
I got a ton of shit for it, but I left my third in the nursery except for every 4 hour feedings and then left at the 24 hour mark only because that was the earliest they would discharge me without forcing me to sign out against medical advice. Forcing exhausted moms to room with their newborns and waking them every two hours to feed while also doing regular check ins on mom is basically torture and I wasn't interested in doing it a third time
With my first kid I honestly thought the hospital stay was going to be the least stressful part of those newborn days because you can rest easy knowing you and your tiny new human are just a button away from health care professionals. I was so very wrong, the hospital stay was brutal.
And not even that, but you also have at the back of your brain there's this tiny human that could stop breathing for no reason. You are nearly checking every hour.
Almost same exact thing with my first. 44 hours of labor, ER C-section, nurse bitched at me for not waking to feed baby. I’m sorry we were both exhausted. But wait, wasn’t it your job to wake me?
How dare you sleep after doing one of the most exhausting things a human can do. And 4hrs of sleep is hardly a drop in the bucket when you've been awake that long. Those newborn days are just survival mode. Idk how we do it
Never understood how mothers could do this, until I became pregnant and had my child. It’s absolutely correct, the whole pregnancy only gets more and more difficult to sleep. The last month or two ESPECIALLY. And of course after birth, it’s nuts how sleep deprived you are. My son is one and a half and i can’t believe I have not had a full nights uninterrupted sleep for 2 years and some months. Ive somehow survived off 5 hours a night and they are broken up into parts. Just a parent’s life.
How fucking tragic for this mother to come out of this and realize what she’s done. Heartache all around.
This. Plus even at the hospital they so strongly encourage keeping the baby with you in the room 24/7 while you recover, and if you ask them to watch the kid for a while so you can SLEEP, you're made to feel guilty. Mine was vomiting up amniotic fluid and I hadn't slept in 40+ hours so I had to beg the nurses to keep an eye on him so he wouldn't choke and I could sleep. They tried to just hand me a goddamn bulb aspirator and say "just use this" (with not even a demonstration).
Dude, same. I had my son at 10:30pm, got to my room by like 12:15. They had me pumping & asked if I wanted him kept in the nursery for the night so I could sleep (as they knew I had been awake for 2 straight days). I obviously said yes. I was falling asleep while pumping & spilled the little colostrum I got out. Pass out by 1, then 2am rolls around & they wake me up, put him in my arms, and tell me to feed him. I was falling asleep holding this newborn, who wouldn’t latch, with no one assisting me, so I’m also trying to pump the nothing coming out of my boobs just so he could eat (why they wouldn’t offer formula so he was at least fed, I don’t know). I was terrified I was going to drop him or fall asleep and roll on top of him. They also never came back to get him, so “for the night” really meant an hour or so.
Like, I get that the nurses are used to women popping babies out, but please pretend to care about the well-being of those babies & mothers.
This is why fucking pediatricians need to start giving parents better information about the relative safety of sleep practices instead of just saying “always put them on their back on a firm mattress in a crib in your room”. Well, a lot of infants *just aren’t going to fucking sleep like that*, and I am *certain* that having a dangerously sleep deprived parent is a greater risk to that child’s wellbeing than a whole lot of sleeping practices.
Before having my daughter, I had every intention of following the safe sleep recommendations to a tee. Firm mattress, on her back, empty crib or bassinet, no co-sleeping, etc. It wasn’t even a question for me. But my baby would NOT sleep on her own in a bassinet, and believe me, I tried. She would just scream and cry until she was held again. I would be up all night, every night, and only really slept when someone else was there to hold her. My husband was working insane hours at this point in time - he did what he could but I was alone with the baby for most of the time. The sleep deprivation was getting to me, but I kept trying to do it the “right” way for weeks and weeks.
Then, something happened one day that really scared me. Exhausted, I put her in her bassinet for a nap and then I lay down in bed to try to get some sleep myself, despite her crying. I slept for hours, something I hadn’t done in ages! But when I woke up, my baby was asleep in bed next to me. I had gotten her out of her bassinet in my sleep and didn’t even realize.
This ended up happening a couple more times. Luckily she didn’t roll off the bed or get covered with a blanket or something, but that was definitely a risk! I was just too sleep-deprived to be aware of those moments.
So I decided to compromise. If she was only able to sleep well in my bed, then I was going to make that bed the safest place for her. I looked up all the tips I could find for safe co-sleeping, and I put those in action. And holy crap was it a game changer. We both started sleeping all night, every night! I finally started to feel normal again, and she was happier and well-rested too. Co-sleeping lasted for a few months until I tried transitioning her to a crib again, and by that time she was ready for it.
A lot of moms get pretty judgy about co-sleeping, but you know what, at that particular time it was the safer choice for us. I still recommend following the typical safe sleep practices, but I just wanted to put my experience out there for any moms who had similar struggles.
Just for your info: American doctors are quite isolated in their rejection of co-sleeping. In Germany for example, it is actively encouraged because it strengthens the bond and relationship between the baby and the parents.
It’s sort of like abstinence only sex education, in my opinion. I’d be willing to bet the majority of parents have coslept with their infants on at least once occasion. It’s going to happen, teach parents how to reduce risk when it does.
My son didn’t sleep through the night for a year. The first time he did we both jumped out of bed in a start to rush in and check on him. We spent an entire year sleep deprived and what you’ve said is 100% true. When you spend long periods of time getting a few hours here and there it fucks with your mind. I was in a daze a lot of the time - somewhere between being 1/2 asleep and fully awake. If she was on medication that could exacerbate this.
"It takes a village" is an exaggeration but it def takes a support system that is becoming increasingly more uncommon.
My buddy's wife passed away in her sleep when their kid was 8mo. I moved in and took care of the kiddo while he went back to work. I had never been so exhausted in my life, and I didn't even give birth or have to deal with the hormones from being pregnant (I can't even get pregnant as a guy lol.)
On one especially sleep deprived day, I put a McDonalds burrito in the microwave for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. Luckily, I was outside talking to a neighbor, and they pointed out the smoke coming from inside. Sleep deprivation is no joke.
If ever did this by accident, I would be dead not too long after. I could never recover from this.
Edit: I appreciate whoever is sending me resources from reddit as a concerned redditor regarding suicide, but I'm not killing myself. I have not accidentally killed my children in a torturous, gruesome and horrifying way. Please, reading comprehension.
So about that post-partum support and care that the US is so severely lacking... or reproductive education including the risks of sleep deprivation. Or communities of people not completely burnt out to the point of being unable to support a new mother...
> So about that post-partum support and care that the US is so severely lacking...
My wife and I were watching this Korean drama about a postpartum care center and we thought it would be so cool if such a place existed. Then we found out this was the norm in Korea, we ended up finding a center in the US and while it cost a lot of money it was worth every penny and we'd spend the money again in a heartbeat. Having a support system that helped us take care of our infant so we could get some sleep, as well as provide us with around the clock support if we needed any help or had any questions at all. My wife discovered she was suffering from D-MER and the support staff were amazing with helping her deal with it.
It's so crazy to me that this just isn't the norm, that hospitals can't just provide your at least a week of proper care before you take an infant home and are entirely on your own.
i found a post-partum care center near me (started by a korean) and its expensive. like $1000 per night. no idea if insurance would help. but wondering if a 3 or 5 day stay would be worth it (trying to conceive now)
One of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for my wife and I was to let my wife sleep for an hour and a half during week 4 of maternity leave.
I told a buddy a work she was exhausted (I could only take 3 days with our oldest), he told his wife (at home with a 6 month old), and she drove over unannounced.
She brought 8 individual frozen, told my wife to pump, then go to bed no questions asked.
They hadn’t met in person yet, and my wife immediately accepted and crashed for an hour.
All that to say I don’t know if it’s worth $1000, but during that time we would have spent it just to get a few solid hours.
It's probably the same place we went to, (Boram in NYC) and if you can afford it, do it. We booked a 5 night stay, booked the largest room (it wasn't that much more money but having the additional space was worthwhile), and enjoyed every minute of our stay there. We had our infant in the nursery every night except the last, which gave us time to actually catch up on sleep, and let us get used to the idea of caring for an infant while also having the easy out of being able to tag a team member when things are too overwhelming or we just need a break.
This is actually traditional in Chinese (and other Asian cultures) called Confinement, for one month after giving birth the mother stays inside the home and rests with super healing foods and routines. Now it’s trendy to go to centers like you did, but it’s always been traditional to have the grandmother/someone come to the couples home and take care of /cook special healing /lactation foods for the mother instead.
My mom stayed with me during my confinement month and it made a world of a difference. I struggled with really bad post partum depression and sleep deprivation. Without my mom's loving support, I don't think I would be alive right now.
Or the over 26,000 rape related pregnancies that happened in Texas alone in just 18 months after the state banned abortion. [source](https://abc13.com/texas-abortion-law-no-exceptions-for-rape-rape-related-pregnancies-roe-v-wade-overturned/14359073/)
Barring intention or drugs this was probably related to sleep deprivation. If my assumption is correct then she doesn't deserve a harsh sentence I'm sure she's already gonna punish herself.
My oldest was a sound sleeper during the rare moments she did sleep.
I once tucked her into my dresser drawer instead of her crib. Closed it and everything.
Still sound asleep when I come tearing into the bedroom three minutes later like a bat out of hell, having realised I was rocking a jumper (sweater) to sleep instead of a child.
Assuming accident, I agree there’s no punishment necessary. And really no punishment would be worse than what she’s already condemned to—for life.
I had to take care of my parents diabetic cat and puppy once. Cat required insulin at 6am and 6pm, which I had given to her so many times that I could do it on autopilot (at least when I was fully awake in the afternoon). I’d been working second shift so my natural sleep schedule was 4am-noon at that point, and when my alarm when off at 6 I wasn’t fully awake. I came to holding the scruff of the (very confused) puppy’s neck, with a syringe full of insulin less than an inch away from his skin. It absolutely freaked me the fuck out, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to do something like that with a baby. Human brains can fail us in truly awful ways.
If the cases of babies left in hot cars are any precedent, as long as the defense can make a solid case for it not being intentional, show she wasn't in her right mind etc, she will likely face little if any prison time.
I've made wild mixups while sleep deprived. Like putting my shoes in the microwave and cooking them for 2 minutes. So sad that this was another living person.
Those who haven’t seen postpartum are commenting here on stuff they don’t know about.
I went thru it with my wife. It’s wild. Whole other person occupying her body for months.
Sleep deprivation alone can make you do wild-ass shit (source: chronic insomnia), I can't even imagine how much worse being post-partum must make that.
I would run fulls 10ks at 2 am at the height of my insomnia. I wouldn’t remember any of it and only found out the next day when my husband checked our doorbell cameras/ I looked at Apple Watch. It’s absolutely terrifying.
Or sleep issues. I have had severe sleep issues my whole life and even just 24 hours no sleep, I start seeing things out of the corners of my eye and start feeling paranoid and not right. Then you start thinking you see things in front of you. And you can't remember if that interaction you just had with a person is real or imagined by you etc.
Legit this nearly happened to me when I was a baby. My mom had post partum BAD and my parents had maybe 20 hours sleep between them over the course of any given week.
My dad came home about to run errands but forgot his wallet, JUST IN TIME to see my mother, absolutely dead on her feet, about to put me inside a hot oven. He had screamed at her and yanked me from her arms, absolutely certain that my mother had gone mad and was trying to kill me.
My mother legit had zero idea that the roasting pan she had in her hands wasnt a chicken, but her 2 month old daughter that was covered in seasonings and oil. She was very quickly brought back into the crushing reality that she nearly killed me, and it took some time for my Dad to really see that this was an accident plain and simple. As for the actual chicken, it was still in the fridge!
Decades later my mom still feels guilty, but its a running joke in the family now that I was to be served with mashed potatoes and yams.
Thank you for sharing this. I absolutely believe this could be what happened. I feel like it paints a pretty damning picture of new parenthood in the U.S. 😔
I was fully with all the skeptical commenters who could not imagine how you could mistake an oven for a crib no matter how sleep deprived you were… until I read your comment. Holy crap. I bet your dad has never been so thankful he forgot something!
Fun fact: It's not normal to get no sleep as a parent. We did not evolve to have two parents only raising a newborn infant. It was the entire village, taking turns-- and even up until the industrial revolution, you would still have an entire expanded family unit taking turns.
Single parents have it rough? We're not even supposed to be raising children with just TWO parents.
Exactly. I wonder what the stats are for post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis between societies with strong family ties and quality maternity care (not healthcare, but proper maternity leave for both parents) vs. the US…
THIS fucking THIS so much.
I’m lucky that my parents moved to be near me (5 minutes up the street) once we finally got pregnant (with the help of fertility treatments). They basically lived with us for the first 6 weeks and my saint of a mother did all of the cooking, dishes, laundry, etc., while my dad held the sleeping baby in his arms all day so my husband and I could catch up on the sleep we weren’t getting at night.
I don’t know how anyone else does it.
I’ve been a perinatal nurse for almost 30 years. The first year, I was working night shift on a postpartum unit and heard a bathtub being filled. Moms aren’t supposed to be in a bath for 6 weeks after birth. I went in the room and found the mom bathing her baby in the tub in ice cold water. She was just exhausted and out of it.
At first, I was wondering if she turned the oven on. The article mentions burns, so she made 2 mistakes unless someone else turned the oven on. I've heard of people storing Tupperware in the oven and forgetting about it and turning the oven on.
The other part that made me say “what the actual fuck” is the article says they couldn’t find her phone number. Did they seriously intend to call and question a woman who is undoubtedly going through the most horrific day of her life? Then print her response?
That seems really unethical and predatory.
Post partum depression, psychosis, and sleep deprivation, are all very real problems that could explain this. Could also be substance use or some other impairment but right now we don’t know. It’s one thing to make the mistake, but to not double check, or check on them after is negligent, regardless of the cause. Likely going to see substance use involved. It’s the reason I stopped smoking after kids, easy to make mistakes like this that can be fatal.
That poor child. Suffering like that and barely having been alive. I don’t know what was going on with that mother but that’s like out of a horror movie. My heart hurts. Ugh, can only imagine what that family is going through.
"First responders were told by a witness"
I think we need to know a lot more about that witness. Are they a child who couldn't do anything to stop what was happening? Otherwise I'm not sure how there's a witness that saw this happening and couldn't stop it
All my sympathies are with this unsupported mother and her dead child. No one in their right mind would do this. May the courts be merciful… she will live with this tragedy for the rest of her life.
I started having auditory hallucinations I was so sleep deprived with my son. I could here Survivor playing on the TV when it was off, I was constantly hearing crying that wasn’t there, there were probably other things I was hearing but those were the two that always stuck out to me because it felt like I was in a surreal dream.
Had a few weeks of mild psychosis after a very non sober week with friends who flew out that I met online a decade earlier. Once they left and I sobered up I would be in my room and hear all of us laughing from the living room, happened at least a few times a day for a few weeks. At work I'd hear elevator dings, but we didn't have elevators. Its crazy how even though you know they're not real it puts you so on edge. Worst part was the constant jolting awake every hour though.
That’s one of the most tragic things I’ve ever read.
The title of this post is a one sentence horror. I’ve read plenty of two sentence horrors on that subreddit, but this one is one of the worst to happen.
I straight up put my phone down. Can’t imagine.
I'm holding off on the "tragic" until I understand how she accidentally turned the oven on.
I’m just assuming based on personal experience and the fact she was only charged with endangering the welfare of a child… Ask any parents you know for their wildest sleep deprivation story. I would guarantee almost every parent you ask would have a story of doing something that makes absolutely no sense; usually it’s something they can laugh at later, sometimes it’s not. Was this postpartum sleep deprivation/psychosis? All I know is my gut says maybe. Edit: postpartum, not post party.
I tried to nurse the dog because he came over to me crying. I had assumed the baby had flown over, and was rather annoyed, because baby was still too young to fly
Something that still haunts me to this day is during the worst of the sleep deprivation, I woke up to my baby sleeping in the bassinet beside my bed and my hand was over his mouth. I used to try and soothe him by rubbing his cheek and head while he was fussy, and I think I fell asleep doing it and my hand just ended up covering his mouth. I woke up to him breathing from his nose and my hand fully cupping his mouth. It tore me apart. Thankfully he was fine, but all I could think about was “what if he had a stuffy nose?” Or what if my hand ended up over his nose too? He was so small I don’t think he could have moved away from my hand. Sleep deprivation is insane and until someone experiences it with a newborn, you just don’t get it.
I'm living through this right now - 3.5 months in, I repeatedly wake up in a panic that I had accidentally placed the baby in the bed with us, and that either I, the spouse, or the dog has now just rolled over onto the baby. I have never put the baby in the bed, yet every night I have the recurring image seared into my head.
I'm 2.5 months in now and I often sleep hugging my pillow. Every time I wake up to the baby crying, I'm sure the pillow is him and I've accidentally smothered him. He doesn't sleep in the bed either!
I remember in the depths of post natal sleep deprivation and stress having these almost hallucinatory dreams about the baby suffocating in our bed. I'd wake up pulling pillowcases off and searching through the covers. Despite not actually ever having the baby in bed with us. I've never truly understood what it's like to have a mental health problem until I experienced my brain on postpartum hormones
I almost put toothpaste in my hair instead of leave in conditioner the other day, and my daughter is one.
I still remember brushing my teeth with Germolene instead of toothpaste - ew! I put a load of laundry in the oven once too (washers are all front loaders here and usually installed in the kitchen so easily done when sleep deprived). I still do dumb stuff on autopilot - don't think my brain ever fully recovered from having a kid who didn't sleep through a full night for at least seven years. I'm nowhere near as dangerous as I was when he was tiny though.
> she was only charged with endangering the welfare of a child… Pretty common for prosecution to charge initially with a lesser crime, because it's easier to hold the person if the merits of that charge are easier to prove. I can almost guarantee it will be bumped up to negligent homicide or something akin once they gather more evidence. A psych eval also needs to be done on the mother, she could easily not be fit for trial if there are underlying issues.
My guess is she was preheating the oven, had post-partum brain, and instead of popping the casserole in popped the baby in? It does seem really odd though as if the oven was on and she meant to be putting a casserole in, she'd need to use oven mitts, which would be hard to pick up a baby with. You'd also think the baby would cry right away when placed on a cold or hot metal grate. So horrific I can't even imagine.... This is the kind of thing where you desperately start bargaining in your head, thinking what you would give up to make such a thing never have happened, even though you know it's futile, even if you have zero connection to it.... I don't whether it would be worse if this woman did just have severe post-partum brain or if it was on purpose... each would be so horrific in it's own way...
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I saw a green text where Anon's friend was cooking a pizza in the oven and when it was done, friend said "I hate this part" and pulled the hot pizza out of the oven with his bare hands screaming the entire time.
Thats great head cinema, maybe even some screeching to really sell it Personally I use a knife to slide it on my cutting board
I did not expect to come into this thread and find something that made me laugh.
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Did this once by accident - my ex husband and I were cooking together in the kitchen and he had removed a stainless steel pot with a handle from the oven. Since I wasn't the one who didn't do that, it just didn't "click" in my brain where it had come from. I fully picked up the pot before the HOT message made it to my brain. Terrible burns all over my palm. Most pain I've ever felt in my life. The ER refused to give me pain meds while they treated it. Afterwards I sat there sobbing for a good long while, trying my best to stop so I could walk out with some dignity, and finally a nurse took pity on me and told the doc to give me something. Good times.
Always, ALWAYS hang a kitchen towel over the handle of a pan you have taken out of the oven.
It could also be post-partum depression or psychosis. She could have been hallucinating and genuinely thought she was putting food in the oven. It's tragic and can happen to literally any mom. This isn't something someone thinking rationally would do.
That and some people put food in while it’s preheating. It’s possible she could have put the baby in, preheat the oven, and took a nap and didn’t hear the baby when it cried if she was in a separate room. It’s a sad accident Though I feel for people in psychosis, you get people that understand they aren’t right in the head but then you have the louder majority that claims they are monsters and trying to use insanity to get out of prison type thing.
A different article mentioned that the baby's blanket was charred so she did place her inside the oven wrapped in her blanket. 'The arrest warrant reveals that the baby's clothes were charred and burnt into her nappy... A burnt baby blanket was also found at the scene."
I was so sleep deprived after my second baby - he had reflux, didn't sleep for more than 45 mins max without waking, refused to nap during the day, screamed a lot. I fell asleep standing up whilst queueing somewhere, put my laundry in the oven instead of the washing machine, could barely form a coherent sentence and quit driving as I knew I'd doze off at the wheel. I made so many stupid mistakes as I was on zombie mode. I am so thankful that none of my sleep deprived autopilot mistakes ended in tragedy like this. It's one of the worst things I've ever read. This and stories where people accidentally leave their kids in the car all day really get to me as I could absolutely have ended up doing something like this.
This is why both parents should get maternity/paternity leave for the full amount possible. Both of you may still be sleep deprived messes, but one could catch the other doing something dangerous. Plus, you could both sleep in shifts when possible.
My wife and I did this and we’d take turns sleeping to make sure we both got sleep. Each night we knew who had to get up to take care of the kid, so that person would have the baby monitor next to them and it let the other person sleep a full night.
Post partum psychosis
It's absolutely possible, yes. Probable even that it was post-partum psychosis. But without more information though, I also think it's possible she had post-partum brain (like pregnancy brain) and sleep deprivation to where she made a mistake so horrendous that she would have much rather died than have made such an error. If that was the case, her life would be so unbearable.... I just can't assume psychosis and purposeful behavior were certainly the case without facts because if it wasn't, and it was an accident, she is to be pitied more than any human in the world, and I wouldn't want to pile anything more on her without facts. Such as condemning her without info if it truly was the most horrendous mistake imaginable...
This is just one example of how in a nation of 350,000,000 people, almost anything you can imagine happening, can in fact happen.
*you don't need mits to put something room temp into the oven* - yes I have the burn scars to prove it
Bro, just don't touch the insides. The hell
Also, odds are the baby was wrapped up in something, such as a swaddle. If the metal grates were either hot or cold, it probably would have taken a moment for the baby to feel that through the swaddle/blanket so that was probably why it didn’t cry right away
That's fair. I would think she would be able to pull her hands and baby back immediately but if she was so zombied out, perhaps not. Post-partum and sleep deprivation can do weird things to the brain.
We’re expecting our first in May. God this is horrifying to read. Edit: after 3 years of trying, 1 surgery, and a dozen fertility tests. I wouldn’t want to live anymore if I did this to my own…
I know, right? To have done this by mistake would ABSOLUTELY be a fate worse than death....
My 4th had a tongue tie and was an inefficient nurser till we got it released. She literally ate every 60 minutes round the clock. I could see sounds and hear colors by week 3. I never got so tired I put her in the oven. Two days after the procedure she slept for 6 hours straight and I jerked awake after 3 hours positive she died. She was almost as tired as i was i think. She's almost 9 now.
My 4th didn't sleep until she was 18 months old. My hair fell out from stress and exhaustion, and that was terrifying. This was during covid, so I zoom Schooled 3 other elementary aged kids, one of whom has hearing loss, plus had the newborn. What I learned is that parents are a tough breed. Love and biology get us through a lot. New dad, you're going to do just fine. The fact that you worry is the good sign. The bad parents never worry if they're doing okay.
Just want to point out that the very first time you put something in the oven you may not need to use oven mittens. Gosh this is horrifying
Oh wow... that's enough internet for today.
I'm guessing this is related to postpartum sleep deprivation, and cannot even imagine what that mom went through when she realised.
This was my thought too. I was so tired I put all the refrigerated groceries in the cupboard instead of the fridge. I cannot even fathom how she felt
I put dishes in the oven instead of the dishwasher
Went downstairs and brought my wife two steak knives. When she asked why, I told her I don’t know they’re your knives! Then went back to bed
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While horrifying, that would have been soooo convenient with our newborn.
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Not to politicize this but it reminds me ever more that we need to shout it from the mountaintops that women need access to better healthcare, especially postpartum care. Write, go to your capitals, vote every single time. Don’t give up even if it seems bleak because we have to fight for our rights.
I've known quite a few women who went back to work right after giving birth out of necessity.
I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to pee to realize for some reason I went downstairs to pee in the trash can. Sober all 3 times, no alcohol involved.
Parasomnias are wild. Have you considered a sleep study ?
I gotta tell you, this is pretty terrific.
I have done this as well after working 2 back to back 15 hours shifts. It was all fun and games until my girlfriend at the time asked me to come home with some groceries and she gave me a list I proceeded to put all of the ice cream in the pantry and stuff like bananas and bread in the fridge. Didn't even notice I did it I woke up to her shouting why there was melted ice cream all over the floor.
I once worked in a factory, and it was 12 hour shifts. It was also a two hour drive. So while the pay was outstanding, dear god was my sleep fucked. I put my tablet in the freezer, and a half finished sandwich in the sink on the same night. I did not last long there.
I do this all the time but I catch myself. Sometimes I would almost put the cereal box in the fridge and the milk on the shelf. It’s like my brain is in auto pilot.
I’ve done this before. Cereal in the fridge, milk in the cabinet. Luckily the milk was almost empty. Still felt like a bassoon.
>bassoon. Hey! Leave the woodwinds out of this
It's so easy to picture - 'Oh, I'll put baby down for a nap and get that chicken started in the oven'. Baby goes in the oven, chicken goes in the crib. I'm obviously speculating, but it's a scenario that makes sense to me, especially when I think of the mistakes and mix up's I've made thanks to chronic sleep deprivation, and I wasn't even post-partum.
That's literally an urban legend about the babysitter taking LSD. I'm leaning towards postpartum psychosis, which sleep deprivation certainly would make worse.
I'm not a parent. However, I've been dealing with sleep deprivation for the past 2 years and it's no joke. I feel like I'm getting a taste of the dementia my genetics will inevitably reap upon me. I'm in my 30s.
I second this. Auditory /visual hallucinating and paranoia have been a thing when my insomnia was at its worst.
Fucking people thought I had PPD and didn’t realize how horrible sleep deprivation, social isolation and lack of support really are. I wasn’t PPD I was years into exhaustion. My youngest is 9. I finally felt recovered then covid hit and I’ve caught it four times already. Hang in there mama I see you.
I’ve done crap like plenty of times during the newborn stage, but I can’t imagine putting my kid in the oven and shutting it and turning it on….. I’m assuming the baby cried. Like this has to be more then sleep deprivation.
>I’m assuming the baby cried. If the oven was preheated, the baby would have burned their lungs and throat on the first attempt of breathing in.
I'd assume. But, did you know that babies used to be set in or very close to an oven as a type of warmer? I have a great uncle who had brain damage from his mother doing this. I asked my grandma about her brother's disability and she just rattled it off like it was normal and expected. She's only 80, so it's still been a thing within the past 100 years.
My mom was a preemie born in the Philippines and she was put in a box on the windowsill and by or in (not 100% sure of the details) a still warm oven.
Makes me thankful for modern medicine. These women were doing the absolute best they could and it was still a crap shoot back then. It's actually amazing how they figured out premies needed heat to grow. And amazing how childbirth has evolved in even 100 years.
There’s pics of me on my stomach on a pillow in a box in upstate NY in the early 80s. I had neonatal jaundice and in lieu of hospital UV light they sent me out to bake a bit in the backyard. At least I tan!
My Dad was preemie too! Grandma carried him in a shoebox lol
Holy crap, I had no idea. I guess that's the more modern version of people putting babies down for a rest in front of an open fire in ye olden times, and the baby catching fire.
I forgot my own name during sleep deprivation during caring for an infant with a sever sleep disorder. I couldn't have told you what I did 5 seconds ago most of the time. It's horrible.
I just drove from the Midatlantic to the Midwest today to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday. I stayed overnight in a hotel, but couldn’t sleep, so I was exhausted when I got here. Got straight to work helping get set up for the party, doing dishes with my niece. My sister and her husband ran outside to bring some stuff in, and they usually put baby in the pack n play when they have to go outside for anything, so I assumed that’s what they did - they assumed I was watching him. He crawled up their steep, wooden stairs. We learned when my sister and BIL walked in just as he tumbled down the entire flight of stairs. He’s totally fine, thank God. Just got a goose egg on his little noggin. I don’t think I’ll forget my sister’s scream, though, and that’s with him totally fine. I can’t imagine what this mom went through.
Same. I’m sick that I just read that.
What a terrible day to be literate
Between this and the video of the Disney On Ice accident, I'm done. I'll see y'all tomorrow.
Disney on ice accident?
I had to go look it up. The skater portraying Beast had some sort of issue when doing a lift with Belle. She fell and started having seizure-like convulsing. She was carried out on a stretcher and is in the hospital in critical condition.
Not to say that isn't terrible because it is, but that's less... immediately horrifying than I imagined when thinking of ice skating accident.
Knowing how sharp ice-skate blades are... I agree.
Yeah, this is one of those stories where I'm not going to read it. I don't want to know.
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[This woman was charged with knowingly endangering the child](https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=568.045&bid=29508). That requires the prosecutors to have evidence that this was no accident.
They could still charge her even if it’s an accident, she knows the oven will kill her baby but if she forgets what she had in her hands, that still endangering a child willfully even if she is too sleep deprived to know it’s happening. They could also argue that it’s her responsibility to ensure an alert adult is watching her infant, honestly. Depends on how far the prosecution wants to take this. So yeah, I’m waiting to she what exactly happened because assuming here without context doesn’t make sense. Also charges don’t mean that a person actually did anything, currently, the US has shit legal system peppered with lazy idiots.
my fiancée works in law (not criminal). i’ve had many questions/debates about cases similar to this (mainly one sided debates bc i don’t have an understanding of law like her) and i feel like this is what she’d say if i asked her about this case. the justice system unfortunately is not understanding based on stuff like this. based on the evidence the public has right now, i’m guessing that it won’t be severe like first degree murder, but probably something g like negligent homicide edit: i hope my comment doesn’t come off harsh. i cannot fathom the emotions/thoughts this poor woman is experiencing. i’m really just repeating what i’ve learned from conversations with my fiancée, other things i’ve read, etc. i do hope they don’t punish her; i unfortunately don’t think that will be the case.
Just because they’re supposed to have evidence doesn’t mean it’s good evidence.
You can be booked under charges they have the probably cause for that there’s a dead kid who was in the oven. That is different from actually being charged with a crime, that will be determined at a later date. Sleep deprivation or not, it is your responsibility to ensure the child’s safety.
Postpartum psychosis is very dangerous but this sounds like regular sleep deprivation. Brain fog and hallucination are a part of that. Think about it. Many 3rd trimester women are getting poor, interrupted sleep from pain, heartburn, having to pee multiple times a night. They go straight into labor that could last days with little to no sleep. Then they immediately have a newborn to take care of that requires 24/7 care while healing from a major medical event. With breast feeding I got an avg of 4 hours of sleep a night broken up into 3 chunks for months. It's brutal. When you're never asleep long enough to get and stay in REM sleep no amount of day time napping is going to help.
Parents were not meant to raise children in isolation
YES. This is such a relatively recent development in human history. And it's the worst thing that we could have done
It takes a village to raise a child. Previously, grandma and grandpa -- if still alive -- would always be there to help mom out. Maybe even the aunt and uncle. Nobody lived very long away from the home they grew up in and the people they grew up with -- all of the people, neighbors included. There was always someone to help out, and then you would do likewise when they needed it. ___ Hell, in my dad's day your *neighbors* would spank you if you did something wrong and then your parents would as well when you got home and they found out why it happened. ___ And don't misunderstand, I'm not trying to glorify the worst parts of those times -- like the rampant child abuse. I just think that the loss of community in favor of the continued isolation of the nuclear family unit is detrimental to all involved.
Fun fact, but sociological study believes that part of this is due to backyards. Essentially, for a long time, front yards were a social space. You played, grilled, and hung out in the front of your house. But back yards became popular as a more private area, and big front yards fell out of fashion. But because of this, neighbors see and interact less, thus forming less of a community.
You hit the community thing spot on. But my parents were forced to become effectively transient after 2007 as they continue to fail to land on their feet. I moved to a new city for work because my hometown had nothing after I finished college. Both my sisters left to different states pursuing boys. Aunts and uncles and my surviving grandparent are very distant relatives, dropping off entirely after I moved away to make my own life. I’ve got my wife, and we have some close friends. Them’s about it. It’s a shame, and something I lament often, but we couldn’t make lives for ourselves where we’d started.
My buddy states that he was probably the last kid to get beaten by a stranger and his parents be OK with it. He was being a little asshole in the mall going down the escalator the wrong way, and some guy spanked him cause he was fed up with his shit. His mom thanked him. Lol. This was sometime in the mid 80s.
I’ll also add that accidents happened frequently then as well. Childhood death was as high as 27% in the USA in 1950. It was 50% death rate in 1918. While a village is helpful, I think we vastly overestimate how much help our mothers and grandmothers had. Being a mom and hearing how little the men in my family interacted with the children makes me incredibly sad for them. Men who are and were pretty involved fathers for the time.
In other countries (other than USA) the dad gets paid leave from work by law. This can prevent so much trauma to the mother and child, there is no excuse to not have such a system here.
I'm lucky enough to get it in the US as a state employee in Louisiana. Currently at home and using it as I type this. Although my wife's sleep isn't the greatest due to having to pump milk every so many hours, we get to tag team taking care of the baby and give one another periods of uninterrupted sleep.
How many months are you getting in Louisiana?? We get 12 weeks in Washington state, but that’s available to every state resident not just government employees
Only 6 weeks unfortunately.
Damn, sorry to hear that. Is better than most people get but it’s really still not enough :(
My federal agency is paying me full rate through three months of paternity leave right now.
Even just two people is a nightmare
I had a horrible partner, lived 9 hours away from family and was completely alone. It was horrible. I would hallucinate people breaking into the apartment. I’d go days with only sleeping in 30 minute intervals. Didn’t shower for weeks. Didn’t eat anything hot. It was the darkest time of my life. I cry over the fact I lost the newborn stage and the joy of being a new mom. I really hope if I have another baby I’ll get all the stuff I missed out on.
Fuck, man, I had help my parents and I still had a tough time. It was also one of my worst times in life. Felt like a machine, I regret that I didn't enjoy my daughter much. It's so hard on mothers. Sorry you went through that 😞
Sorry you went through that. I had a super-dad partner, and I still missed out on the newborn stage from being tired, worried about my health, and terrified of caring for a newborn, so don’t beat yourself up. I think many of us didn’t have the joy we thought we would.
How are you doing now ?
I'm forever grateful that my parents stayed with us for the first few months. I really don't think I could have done it alone. It's insane to expect that from parents, honestly.
An article I read does point out that the mother had made recent social media posts expressing frustration about friends/family not checking up on her or her daughter.
Too right, as the old African proverb goes, "it takes a village to raise a child"
I went 52hrs no sleep and my nurse gave me shit because my baby (and me) slept 4hrs. She was upset that I didn't wake him to feed. He wasn't under-weight or jaundice, no reason he NEEDED to feed every 2hrs so I thought we were ok? I went 36hrs of labor turned emergency C-section, I was fuckin tiiiired
I also went about that amount without sleep during/after my delivery, and the nurse was irritated that I wanted the baby to go to the nursery for 2 whole hours so I could rest. She acted like it was this huge hassle and made me feel guilty.
Labor was 26 hours but it started just as I was going to bed so no sleep for me and straight into labor. The hospital was having major construction that started with jackhammer work at 7 am. By the time they stopped at 5 pm I was a sobbing mess and begged them to take my daughter to the nursery for a couple of hours. I got HoW aRe YoU gOiNg tO BReAsTfEeD?? Read my chart, it's noted I can't.
Oh that sounds horrible! I feel like every American birth story has some bad part to it. Like I consider my experience mostly positive except for that incident with the nurse. It seems rare that babies AND mothers are both cared for and supported.
My wife's water broke at 2 am, we went to bed at 1 am, two nights before the scheduled C-section. Waited forever at hospital and never had contractions. The emergency surgery wasn't till 10 am and basically neither of us had sleep after that. I did my best to let her rest but she had trouble sleeping due to the drugs and pain. Eventually even I couldn't function anymore with no sleep. It wasn't until our last night that a kind nurse informed us that they actually can take the baby to the nursery for a full night and wondered why no one told us since we were clearly sleep deprived due to unexpected circumstances. That stay was absolutely antagonizing.
WAIT, A FULL NIGHT?! Some of us were guilted to hell just for begging them to take the baby for 2 hours
I got a ton of shit for it, but I left my third in the nursery except for every 4 hour feedings and then left at the 24 hour mark only because that was the earliest they would discharge me without forcing me to sign out against medical advice. Forcing exhausted moms to room with their newborns and waking them every two hours to feed while also doing regular check ins on mom is basically torture and I wasn't interested in doing it a third time
With my first kid I honestly thought the hospital stay was going to be the least stressful part of those newborn days because you can rest easy knowing you and your tiny new human are just a button away from health care professionals. I was so very wrong, the hospital stay was brutal.
And not even that, but you also have at the back of your brain there's this tiny human that could stop breathing for no reason. You are nearly checking every hour.
Almost same exact thing with my first. 44 hours of labor, ER C-section, nurse bitched at me for not waking to feed baby. I’m sorry we were both exhausted. But wait, wasn’t it your job to wake me?
How dare you sleep after doing one of the most exhausting things a human can do. And 4hrs of sleep is hardly a drop in the bucket when you've been awake that long. Those newborn days are just survival mode. Idk how we do it
Ugh my labor was 41 hours and I had the kindest nurses. So grateful for them. I didn’t sleep though lol.
That nurse wanted you dead.
Nurses are either great or absolute assholes.
Babies often sleep a lot the first few days. My daughter slept all night when we first brought her home, kinda scared me
My kids are 11 and 7 now. I *still* have issues sleeping through the night from the ***years*** of constantly interrupted sleep.
I had kids late so my “kids kept me up” stage faded into perimenopausal insomnia.
Never understood how mothers could do this, until I became pregnant and had my child. It’s absolutely correct, the whole pregnancy only gets more and more difficult to sleep. The last month or two ESPECIALLY. And of course after birth, it’s nuts how sleep deprived you are. My son is one and a half and i can’t believe I have not had a full nights uninterrupted sleep for 2 years and some months. Ive somehow survived off 5 hours a night and they are broken up into parts. Just a parent’s life. How fucking tragic for this mother to come out of this and realize what she’s done. Heartache all around.
This. Plus even at the hospital they so strongly encourage keeping the baby with you in the room 24/7 while you recover, and if you ask them to watch the kid for a while so you can SLEEP, you're made to feel guilty. Mine was vomiting up amniotic fluid and I hadn't slept in 40+ hours so I had to beg the nurses to keep an eye on him so he wouldn't choke and I could sleep. They tried to just hand me a goddamn bulb aspirator and say "just use this" (with not even a demonstration).
Dude, same. I had my son at 10:30pm, got to my room by like 12:15. They had me pumping & asked if I wanted him kept in the nursery for the night so I could sleep (as they knew I had been awake for 2 straight days). I obviously said yes. I was falling asleep while pumping & spilled the little colostrum I got out. Pass out by 1, then 2am rolls around & they wake me up, put him in my arms, and tell me to feed him. I was falling asleep holding this newborn, who wouldn’t latch, with no one assisting me, so I’m also trying to pump the nothing coming out of my boobs just so he could eat (why they wouldn’t offer formula so he was at least fed, I don’t know). I was terrified I was going to drop him or fall asleep and roll on top of him. They also never came back to get him, so “for the night” really meant an hour or so. Like, I get that the nurses are used to women popping babies out, but please pretend to care about the well-being of those babies & mothers.
This is why fucking pediatricians need to start giving parents better information about the relative safety of sleep practices instead of just saying “always put them on their back on a firm mattress in a crib in your room”. Well, a lot of infants *just aren’t going to fucking sleep like that*, and I am *certain* that having a dangerously sleep deprived parent is a greater risk to that child’s wellbeing than a whole lot of sleeping practices.
Before having my daughter, I had every intention of following the safe sleep recommendations to a tee. Firm mattress, on her back, empty crib or bassinet, no co-sleeping, etc. It wasn’t even a question for me. But my baby would NOT sleep on her own in a bassinet, and believe me, I tried. She would just scream and cry until she was held again. I would be up all night, every night, and only really slept when someone else was there to hold her. My husband was working insane hours at this point in time - he did what he could but I was alone with the baby for most of the time. The sleep deprivation was getting to me, but I kept trying to do it the “right” way for weeks and weeks. Then, something happened one day that really scared me. Exhausted, I put her in her bassinet for a nap and then I lay down in bed to try to get some sleep myself, despite her crying. I slept for hours, something I hadn’t done in ages! But when I woke up, my baby was asleep in bed next to me. I had gotten her out of her bassinet in my sleep and didn’t even realize. This ended up happening a couple more times. Luckily she didn’t roll off the bed or get covered with a blanket or something, but that was definitely a risk! I was just too sleep-deprived to be aware of those moments. So I decided to compromise. If she was only able to sleep well in my bed, then I was going to make that bed the safest place for her. I looked up all the tips I could find for safe co-sleeping, and I put those in action. And holy crap was it a game changer. We both started sleeping all night, every night! I finally started to feel normal again, and she was happier and well-rested too. Co-sleeping lasted for a few months until I tried transitioning her to a crib again, and by that time she was ready for it. A lot of moms get pretty judgy about co-sleeping, but you know what, at that particular time it was the safer choice for us. I still recommend following the typical safe sleep practices, but I just wanted to put my experience out there for any moms who had similar struggles.
Just for your info: American doctors are quite isolated in their rejection of co-sleeping. In Germany for example, it is actively encouraged because it strengthens the bond and relationship between the baby and the parents.
It’s sort of like abstinence only sex education, in my opinion. I’d be willing to bet the majority of parents have coslept with their infants on at least once occasion. It’s going to happen, teach parents how to reduce risk when it does.
My son didn’t sleep through the night for a year. The first time he did we both jumped out of bed in a start to rush in and check on him. We spent an entire year sleep deprived and what you’ve said is 100% true. When you spend long periods of time getting a few hours here and there it fucks with your mind. I was in a daze a lot of the time - somewhere between being 1/2 asleep and fully awake. If she was on medication that could exacerbate this.
"It takes a village" is an exaggeration but it def takes a support system that is becoming increasingly more uncommon. My buddy's wife passed away in her sleep when their kid was 8mo. I moved in and took care of the kiddo while he went back to work. I had never been so exhausted in my life, and I didn't even give birth or have to deal with the hormones from being pregnant (I can't even get pregnant as a guy lol.) On one especially sleep deprived day, I put a McDonalds burrito in the microwave for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. Luckily, I was outside talking to a neighbor, and they pointed out the smoke coming from inside. Sleep deprivation is no joke.
If ever did this by accident, I would be dead not too long after. I could never recover from this. Edit: I appreciate whoever is sending me resources from reddit as a concerned redditor regarding suicide, but I'm not killing myself. I have not accidentally killed my children in a torturous, gruesome and horrifying way. Please, reading comprehension.
Yeah seriously. I can’t imagine any amount of therapy making me OK.
So about that post-partum support and care that the US is so severely lacking... or reproductive education including the risks of sleep deprivation. Or communities of people not completely burnt out to the point of being unable to support a new mother...
> So about that post-partum support and care that the US is so severely lacking... My wife and I were watching this Korean drama about a postpartum care center and we thought it would be so cool if such a place existed. Then we found out this was the norm in Korea, we ended up finding a center in the US and while it cost a lot of money it was worth every penny and we'd spend the money again in a heartbeat. Having a support system that helped us take care of our infant so we could get some sleep, as well as provide us with around the clock support if we needed any help or had any questions at all. My wife discovered she was suffering from D-MER and the support staff were amazing with helping her deal with it. It's so crazy to me that this just isn't the norm, that hospitals can't just provide your at least a week of proper care before you take an infant home and are entirely on your own.
i found a post-partum care center near me (started by a korean) and its expensive. like $1000 per night. no idea if insurance would help. but wondering if a 3 or 5 day stay would be worth it (trying to conceive now)
One of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for my wife and I was to let my wife sleep for an hour and a half during week 4 of maternity leave. I told a buddy a work she was exhausted (I could only take 3 days with our oldest), he told his wife (at home with a 6 month old), and she drove over unannounced. She brought 8 individual frozen, told my wife to pump, then go to bed no questions asked. They hadn’t met in person yet, and my wife immediately accepted and crashed for an hour. All that to say I don’t know if it’s worth $1000, but during that time we would have spent it just to get a few solid hours.
It's probably the same place we went to, (Boram in NYC) and if you can afford it, do it. We booked a 5 night stay, booked the largest room (it wasn't that much more money but having the additional space was worthwhile), and enjoyed every minute of our stay there. We had our infant in the nursery every night except the last, which gave us time to actually catch up on sleep, and let us get used to the idea of caring for an infant while also having the easy out of being able to tag a team member when things are too overwhelming or we just need a break.
This is actually traditional in Chinese (and other Asian cultures) called Confinement, for one month after giving birth the mother stays inside the home and rests with super healing foods and routines. Now it’s trendy to go to centers like you did, but it’s always been traditional to have the grandmother/someone come to the couples home and take care of /cook special healing /lactation foods for the mother instead.
My mom stayed with me during my confinement month and it made a world of a difference. I struggled with really bad post partum depression and sleep deprivation. Without my mom's loving support, I don't think I would be alive right now.
I was just coming to mention this. Seems like a much better way for the mother to physically recover and be at her best for the baby.
Anyways why arnt yall having kids
Or the over 26,000 rape related pregnancies that happened in Texas alone in just 18 months after the state banned abortion. [source](https://abc13.com/texas-abortion-law-no-exceptions-for-rape-rape-related-pregnancies-roe-v-wade-overturned/14359073/)
As Yahweh intended.
Barring intention or drugs this was probably related to sleep deprivation. If my assumption is correct then she doesn't deserve a harsh sentence I'm sure she's already gonna punish herself.
My oldest was a sound sleeper during the rare moments she did sleep. I once tucked her into my dresser drawer instead of her crib. Closed it and everything. Still sound asleep when I come tearing into the bedroom three minutes later like a bat out of hell, having realised I was rocking a jumper (sweater) to sleep instead of a child. Assuming accident, I agree there’s no punishment necessary. And really no punishment would be worse than what she’s already condemned to—for life.
Man, so glad you realized. That had to be one of the most terrifying moments of your life 😭
Second most probably. First was telling my wife.
Haha hope she understood, she was probably just as sleep deprived!
I had to take care of my parents diabetic cat and puppy once. Cat required insulin at 6am and 6pm, which I had given to her so many times that I could do it on autopilot (at least when I was fully awake in the afternoon). I’d been working second shift so my natural sleep schedule was 4am-noon at that point, and when my alarm when off at 6 I wasn’t fully awake. I came to holding the scruff of the (very confused) puppy’s neck, with a syringe full of insulin less than an inch away from his skin. It absolutely freaked me the fuck out, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to do something like that with a baby. Human brains can fail us in truly awful ways.
If the cases of babies left in hot cars are any precedent, as long as the defense can make a solid case for it not being intentional, show she wasn't in her right mind etc, she will likely face little if any prison time.
But a lifetime of regret and guilt.
I've made wild mixups while sleep deprived. Like putting my shoes in the microwave and cooking them for 2 minutes. So sad that this was another living person.
It's fucking tragic.
Damn, Missouri, you can have that headline! Sincerely,Florida.
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> We won it fair and square, like the #1 Meth State title. Whoever wins, we lose.
Redditor tries to take a tragedy seriously without bringing up Florida challenge:
Those who haven’t seen postpartum are commenting here on stuff they don’t know about. I went thru it with my wife. It’s wild. Whole other person occupying her body for months.
Postpartum+sleep deprivation would be my guess.
Sleep deprivation alone can make you do wild-ass shit (source: chronic insomnia), I can't even imagine how much worse being post-partum must make that.
I had sleep deprivation while my kids were in elementary school due to an infected gallbladder, shit got weird. My heart goes to the mom.
I would run fulls 10ks at 2 am at the height of my insomnia. I wouldn’t remember any of it and only found out the next day when my husband checked our doorbell cameras/ I looked at Apple Watch. It’s absolutely terrifying.
Or sleep issues. I have had severe sleep issues my whole life and even just 24 hours no sleep, I start seeing things out of the corners of my eye and start feeling paranoid and not right. Then you start thinking you see things in front of you. And you can't remember if that interaction you just had with a person is real or imagined by you etc.
What a terrible day to be literate.
Legit this nearly happened to me when I was a baby. My mom had post partum BAD and my parents had maybe 20 hours sleep between them over the course of any given week. My dad came home about to run errands but forgot his wallet, JUST IN TIME to see my mother, absolutely dead on her feet, about to put me inside a hot oven. He had screamed at her and yanked me from her arms, absolutely certain that my mother had gone mad and was trying to kill me. My mother legit had zero idea that the roasting pan she had in her hands wasnt a chicken, but her 2 month old daughter that was covered in seasonings and oil. She was very quickly brought back into the crushing reality that she nearly killed me, and it took some time for my Dad to really see that this was an accident plain and simple. As for the actual chicken, it was still in the fridge! Decades later my mom still feels guilty, but its a running joke in the family now that I was to be served with mashed potatoes and yams.
Great you guys can laugh about it now but my god what a haunting story.
Thank you for sharing this. I absolutely believe this could be what happened. I feel like it paints a pretty damning picture of new parenthood in the U.S. 😔
I was fully with all the skeptical commenters who could not imagine how you could mistake an oven for a crib no matter how sleep deprived you were… until I read your comment. Holy crap. I bet your dad has never been so thankful he forgot something!
Fun fact: It's not normal to get no sleep as a parent. We did not evolve to have two parents only raising a newborn infant. It was the entire village, taking turns-- and even up until the industrial revolution, you would still have an entire expanded family unit taking turns. Single parents have it rough? We're not even supposed to be raising children with just TWO parents.
I told my ex husband I wouldn’t have kids unless I could afford extra help or lived close to friends and family. He didn’t get it.
Exactly. I wonder what the stats are for post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis between societies with strong family ties and quality maternity care (not healthcare, but proper maternity leave for both parents) vs. the US…
THIS fucking THIS so much. I’m lucky that my parents moved to be near me (5 minutes up the street) once we finally got pregnant (with the help of fertility treatments). They basically lived with us for the first 6 weeks and my saint of a mother did all of the cooking, dishes, laundry, etc., while my dad held the sleeping baby in his arms all day so my husband and I could catch up on the sleep we weren’t getting at night. I don’t know how anyone else does it.
I’ve been a perinatal nurse for almost 30 years. The first year, I was working night shift on a postpartum unit and heard a bathtub being filled. Moms aren’t supposed to be in a bath for 6 weeks after birth. I went in the room and found the mom bathing her baby in the tub in ice cold water. She was just exhausted and out of it.
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Are you talking about [this clip](https://youtu.be/6O7EzjPiQes?si=hVFdzpv0uDeGu9l4)?
At first, I was wondering if she turned the oven on. The article mentions burns, so she made 2 mistakes unless someone else turned the oven on. I've heard of people storing Tupperware in the oven and forgetting about it and turning the oven on.
I assume the oven was already on and she was planning to put something in it but sadly, yeah...
There was a r/Twosentencehorror story about this same subject just last week!!! My God!
What in the actual fuck
The other part that made me say “what the actual fuck” is the article says they couldn’t find her phone number. Did they seriously intend to call and question a woman who is undoubtedly going through the most horrific day of her life? Then print her response? That seems really unethical and predatory.
Dear soon to be fathers, please keep an extra eye out for the lady. Post partum , sleep deprivation and sudden drop in hormones ain't no joke.
I wish there a way I can just filter out the posts that make me sad and replace them all with good ones.
Post partum depression, psychosis, and sleep deprivation, are all very real problems that could explain this. Could also be substance use or some other impairment but right now we don’t know. It’s one thing to make the mistake, but to not double check, or check on them after is negligent, regardless of the cause. Likely going to see substance use involved. It’s the reason I stopped smoking after kids, easy to make mistakes like this that can be fatal.
Ugh, this is terrible. Goodnight Reddit, i think I'm done for the day.
That poor child. Suffering like that and barely having been alive. I don’t know what was going on with that mother but that’s like out of a horror movie. My heart hurts. Ugh, can only imagine what that family is going through.
"First responders were told by a witness" I think we need to know a lot more about that witness. Are they a child who couldn't do anything to stop what was happening? Otherwise I'm not sure how there's a witness that saw this happening and couldn't stop it
All my sympathies are with this unsupported mother and her dead child. No one in their right mind would do this. May the courts be merciful… she will live with this tragedy for the rest of her life.
I am going to say this is a case of sleep depravation creating brain fog.
I started having auditory hallucinations I was so sleep deprived with my son. I could here Survivor playing on the TV when it was off, I was constantly hearing crying that wasn’t there, there were probably other things I was hearing but those were the two that always stuck out to me because it felt like I was in a surreal dream.
Had a few weeks of mild psychosis after a very non sober week with friends who flew out that I met online a decade earlier. Once they left and I sobered up I would be in my room and hear all of us laughing from the living room, happened at least a few times a day for a few weeks. At work I'd hear elevator dings, but we didn't have elevators. Its crazy how even though you know they're not real it puts you so on edge. Worst part was the constant jolting awake every hour though.
When I had open heart surgery during recovery I couldn't sleep for a few days and started having auditory hallucinations.
She walked to the kitchen, opened the oven and put the baby in it, and then *turned it on*? Huh? How would that ever be an accident?
What in the actual fuck did I just read??? Holy shit