A mother who accidentally killed her 4-week-old baby after she took him to a nightclub and drunkenly slept over him was jailed for more than two years on June 7.
Marina Tilby, 26 fell asleep on her baby after an alcohol-fueled night on March 30, 2017, and the baby was found dead the next day morning.
Judge Paul Thomas called it a “dreadful case of maternal selfishness” and condemned the mother for the “deliberate neglect” of her baby.
She was excessively drunk when she took the child back to the caravan along with two men she had met that night. The next morning Tilby’s sister came to the room and saw her lying on the baby face-down. She pulled the baby from under Tilby and saw blood in the baby’s mouth, according to the Daily Mail.
While baby Darian was taken to a hospital, Tilby’s sister didn’t manage to wake her up for over an hour.
Prosecutor Catherine Richards said the baby suffered a heart attack after his mother slept on him. However, a medical examination couldn’t prove that Tilby’s rolling over Darian caused his death.
Defense lawyer Dyfed Thomas said Tilby’s guilty plea to the willful neglect of Darian was owing to the fact that “she was so intoxicated.”
The mother was not in a relationship with the baby’s father and was depressed and has suffered since the baby’s death, according to Thomas.
“She took a catastrophic set of actions in deciding to go out that night and continuing to drink. She wishes to express to the court, the baby’s father, and her own family her own remorse and feeling of guilt from that night. Her grief will fill her for the absence of her child for the rest of her days,” said Thomas.
Judge Paul Thomas said Tilby failed to pay her role as a mother. “It is a mother’s responsibility, a mother’s duty, and her natural instinct to put the care and safety of her 4-week-old child above all else,” he said.- Smallest Preemie Baby Ever Recorded Home After 5 Months in Hospital–She ‘Weighed As Much As an Apple’
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Thomas said Tilby couldn’t play her role of a mother because she was drunk. “You completely ignored that duty so you could get extremely drunk on a night out. So drunk were you that you fell into a deep sleep and slept on top of your baby. There came a time when he was not moving. He had blood in his mouth, but you didn’t realize because you were so drunk,” he said.
Globally, child homicide by mothers is highest during the first year of life, according to a study published in World Psychiatry.The United States has the highest rate of child homicide in the world, eight for every 100,000 infants. Mothers who kill their infants are found to have “frequent depression, psychosis, prior mental health treatment, and suicidal thoughts,” according to the study.
Drinking Can Hurt Your Baby
Alcoholism in mothers severely impacts their babies. Everything a pregnant woman eats or drinks affects the growth and development of her baby inside her womb, according to the National Institute on Alchohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).These developmental disorders can impact the child for its whole life. Women who drink alcohol during pregnancy can have their baby born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
Those born with this syndrome can “be born small, have problems eating and sleeping, have problems seeing and hearing, have trouble following directions and learning how to do simple things, have trouble paying attention and learning in school, need special teachers and schools, have trouble getting along with others and controlling their behavior, need medical care all their lives,” according to the NIAAA.
