A baby tragically died less than a month after being born when her mother fell asleep breastfeeding and awoke to find her baby partially beneath her unresponsive.

An inquest today at Exeter’s County Hall heard how single mum Daria Laskos gave birth to her first child on March 3, at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital.

Iga was described as a healthy baby who was breastfed on demand, but before her death had started to suffer with wind which would keep them both awake as she struggled to settle.

Two nights before her death, they both had got very little sleep and when Iga awoke the following night crying in a cot next to her bed and wouldn’t settle back down, Daria told in a statement how she took her downstairs and put the television on while she sat on the sofa and breastfeed her.

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“She appeared to want to feed so I sat at the end of sofa with my arm against the back rest,” she said. “I don’t know if I fell asleep. I think she fell asleep while I was breastfeeding.


She added: “I could see straight away she was not breathing and her face was a purple colour.”


Iga was then pronounced dead.

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She said: “Daria fell asleep with her baby in her arms. Co-sleeping on a sofa, there is an association with a risk of overlaying, and the risk is high where a parent is extremely tired.”


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Recording an open conclusion, coroner Philip Spinney said: “It simply means the evidence does not fully disclose the means whereby the cause of death arose.”