Mistakenly??
I suffer from chronic and sometimes severe insomnia. About ten years ago something triggered a “severe” episode and it refused to let up. After about two months of ~90 minutes of light sleep per 24 hour period, my mind began to shatter. I won’t get into details here about how bad it got, but I can totally see how someone could accidentally put a raw chicken in the crib and the baby in the oven.
I also suffer from insomnia - I regularly get 3 hours of sleep per night, and rarely get more than 6 (rarely as in 1-2 times per month). For a week and a half or so, though, after a death in the family, I was getting between 0 and a half hour per night, with obviously no deep sleep.
I developed severe ataxia (I couldn’t walk without a cane), I lost the ability to speak coherently and it would take me minutes to form a sentence. I couldn’t follow conversations, and my appetite decreased to the point where I was down to about 50-100 calories per day (eg, I could sometimes manage a can of coke).
When your brain starts to shut down, things really go south pretty fast. I managed to kickstart things using those meal substitute drinks (which I’d consume by chugging it in one go), and eventually my eating and normal 3-6 hour sleep pattern came back, but I was probably about 24-48 hours away from needing an ambulance.
Luckily I live with my partner and although I put them into a panic, I didn’t have to manage the house/pets and just took sick leave from work. Even after going back, it took some time to return to my normal level of working. At the peak, I would have been absolutely incapable of operating if I lived alone.
My god. Having a kid and only getting a few hours per night for half a year drove me to the brink, it’s genuinely chilling to imagine what you’ve been through. I hope you’re sleeping more now.
If I had to guess, the mother had to have been high on something. How the hell does someone mistake an oven for a crib?
Love how people always jump straight to drugs, but there’s a variety of mental illnesses both permanent and temporary that could cause a mother to do this.
Are you suggesting people should assume postpartum depression/psychosis when they see stories like this?
What quick conclusion should people arrive at in your opinion
I’m not giving this lady excuses but I also almost killed my baby on the 3rd day. All the books say never sleep with a newborn because you could accidentally lay and suffocate your baby. So I avoided the bed but instead I was holding my son in my arms while on the couch and passed out from exhaustion and I found him stuck between me and the couch. I’m so lucky that he could breath and I wasn’t completely crushing him.
Since that day he has never slept in the same bed with me and always slept in a crib or his own bed.
It’s also worth noting, you can get bed attached cribs. You can’t fit in, so you can’t roll onto the baby. At the same time, it’s possible to lie down, skin to skin. Best of both worlds.
Ya, that’s what we did after. I think it was called cosleeper or something along those lines.
I woke up once with my hand/arm on my son but it wasn’t enough to suffocate him. I was patting him when he woke up and then left my hand there.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’m sure other new parents will appreciate that.
I took a job with a multiple hour commute. I was miserable and alone in an unfamiliar state. I was working 16 hour days just to keep the place from imploding after they laid off the rest of my team with zero warning. Had just broken up with my girlfriend. Things were bad. That coupled with the insomnia led to me basically not sleeping at all aside from naps for days on end.
We got hit with a major storm and after 5 days of no power or heat my parents suggested I drive to their house. It was about 2 hours away. I jumped at the chance to get out of that hellhole. Hopped in my car, thought I was a little sleepy but I’d done longer drives many times before. 2 hours was nothing… right?
I started dozing off about an hour in. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. The lines on the road were hypnotizing me. I remember cranking the A/C to max even though it was freezing, turning the radio up and even slapping myself in the face to try and wake myself up. Nothing worked and I started getting scared and looking for a rest area. There were none and there wasn’t a safe spot to pull off. I thought I could make it as I had ”only” 20 minutes of travel left. Nope.
I started microsleeping. Though it’s possible I was doing it the entire time and didn’t even realize it. Nothing would keep me awake. At all. Until I woke up to my car bouncing off a concrete divider on the left side of the highway when I had been in the right lane before. I remember hearing horns blaring and people gunning it to get away from me. I was definitely awake then. I drove home the rest of the way white-knuckled, eyes big as saucers. Couldn’t believe nothing worse happened. I felt like such an asshole putting myself and others in danger like that.
So I can see this happening. Ataxia is no joke. It will creep up on you slowly. You might not even realize you’re microsleeping ever. And hers was obviously much worse than mine. If you think you have insomnia or sleep apnea, tell your doctor.
In Utah they have highway signs that say something like “Drowsy driving is worse than drunk driving. Pull over if you’re tired.”
My insomnia got so bad at one point that from my POV I started blacking out for several hours at a time. I’d look at the clock, blink, and the time would go from like 3pm to 11pm instantly. In reality my brain was just too tired to register anything that happened to me to memory, even the memory of existence in the moment; just…not there. I was my same old self, according to my wife, which I believe, I mean, who the hell else could I be? I don’t live duplicitous, I’m not worried I might have said or done something contrary to me.
It happened one night where I had gone out to dinner with my wife’s grandparents = no memory of the events at all. I drove, apparently…and that’s when I made the earliest appointment I could to get sleeping pills.
Lack of sleep is no joke. It was like someone else was living my life. the highlight reel parts at that. I’d snap back while playing Civ or having to go to work.
…How do you accidentally put a baby in an oven?! JFC, this is awful.
I have never been less intelligent in my adult life than on night 7 of an acid reflux constant screaming night that never ends. That goes on for 6 weeks after birth or longer sometimes
But still an oven and a crib are completely different things, you have to open an oven and then close it. Also ovens typically have racks in them, which would be difficult to fit a baby in with those in.
This sounds like straight malice or insanity.
Sleep depravation is insanity…
The comment you replied to made is pretty clear how sleep deprived a new parent can become.
Some people are more or less susceptible to it, for various reasons. If I get <7h of sleep for 5-7 days in a row my personality starts to change, and that’s not exactly severe sleep depravation…
A newborn parent might just be getting 2-4h a day, which is a disabling amount of sleep depravation. And no, your friend doesn’t survive on 3h/n, if they do they should be a research subject, individuals with SSS are genetically dispositioned to be able to sleep <= 6.5 hours per night. They’re literally a special breed of people, and 3h/n would be an actual marvel
Sleep deprivation is a few notches above insanity. You would gladly kill someone if it ment you could sleep on their corps.
Maybe mom was sleep-deprived and was about to cook a turkey the same time she was taking care of the baby and maybe she put the turkey in the crib…
😳
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been exhausted and later discovered I put the milk by the coffee machine and the coffee in the fridge. Same premise, slightly less terrible outcome.
No actual facts yet, so this claim shouldn’t be reported as fact.
On one hand, I’ve done similar things many times. Fortunately, I was not caring for children at the time.
On the other hand, the more likely scenario is that mom was dealing with some mental health stuff and did it purposely.
Either way, I hope she gets some mental health treatment. She obviously will need it after this, regardless of how it happened.
