Is Sleeping Next To Your Child Illegal? Florida Mother Charged After Both Her Infants Died While Sleeping Next To Her

Florida mother Erin Piche-Pitts, 25, was charged with aggravated manslaughter Tuesday for smothering her second newborn baby to death while the two were sleeping in the same bed in October. Piche-Pitts had been warned several times about the dangers of sleeping next to an infant after her first child died while they were sleeping together in 2009.

Piche-Pitts fell asleep next to her 18-day-old newborn Eric, and when she woke on the morning of Oct. 8, he was unresponsive, local reports said Wednesday.

The incident took place in Piche-Pitts’s bedroom in Winter Haven, Florida, just a 45-minute car ride east of Tampa Bay, when Eric woke up in a bassinet next to the mother’s bed in the middle of the night and started crying. Piche-Pitts prepared a bottle, picked up the baby and rested him next to her on the bed. She fell asleep with the baby’s head nestled into the crook of her arm and woke up 2 1/2 hours later to find Eric unresponsive. She rushed the newborn to a local hospital but he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

Piche-Pitts had similarly caused the death of her first child in November 2009 when she fell asleep while breastfeeding her 13-day-old daughter. She again woke up to find the newborn unresponsive. The baby’s death was ruled an accident, a representative for the Polk County Sherriff’s Department said.

After the death of her daughter in 2009, Piche-Pitts received several warnings about sleeping with infants by a Florida Department of Health employee through a recuperation program called “Healthy Starts” in August 2009 and March 2016, a local report said Wednesday.

A primary care physician said Piche-Pitts was cautioned that she shouldn’t sleep in the same bed as her son when she took the newborn to the doctor's office for an exam Sept. 21.

Due to the number of warnings Piche-Pitts received on the dangers sleeping next to children, detectives determined there was enough probable cause to arrest and charge the mother with aggravated manslaughter of the child.

Piche-Pitts has had an extensive history of arrests, including one while she was pregnant with Eric in July for possession of methamphetamine.

Roughly 3,500 children died suddenly and unexpectedly annually in the United States, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from Oct. 3. The report pointed directly at co-sleeping as one of the causes.

“Have the baby share your room, not your bed. Your baby should not sleep in an adult bed, on a couch, or on a chair alone, with you, or with anyone else,” the report said.

The act of co-sleeping, which is when a parent sleeps in close proximity to his or her child, is not criminalized under U.S. law, according to lawyers.com. While most of these cases are largely viewed as tragic accidents, prosecutors are likely to charge parents whose children’s deaths occurred as a result of co-sleeping if drugs or alcohol are involved.

Parents can be charged with manslaughter or criminal negligence if they ignore considerable dangers that could cause death or serious bodily harm to the child while sleeping.