This mother gave her 3-month old Benadryl to calm him down. He never woke up.
A 21-year-old mother of three from Ohio who gave her baby a lethal dose of Benadryl won’t be serving any jail time after pleading guilty to third-degree manslaughter, NBC4i reported.
Caitlin Jayne Smith, of Marion, Ohio, was sentenced to a year of probation Monday for the March death of her son Owen, NBC4i reported.
Marion police chief Bill Collins told Fox28 that Smith admitted to giving the infant a deadly dose of the drug to calm him down.
"After the lethal dose of Benadryl, she laid him down on an ottoman, and then went upstairs to bed," Collins told Fox 28.
Call logs obtained by Fox28 showed that Smith called her mother and texted the father of the baby, “Owens gone” before calling the police. Smith admitted to giving the baby what was prescribed for a 6-year-old, according to detectives.
According to the Marion Star, detective Scott Sterling said autopsy results determined that the baby was given 3.5 milliliters of Benadryl. Sterling also said he didn’t feel like Smith was remorseful and she wasn’t truthful about administering the drug.
David Lowther, Smith’s defense attorney, told the judge that she watered down the Benadryl and “made a mistake,” the Marion Star reported. Prosecutors clarified in court that the dose was lethal “when none should have been administered at all.”
Benadryl states on its website that the product should not be given to children under 2 years old, but some medical experts, including the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, said it’s OK for children under 2 as long as it’s recommended by a doctor and used for allergy purposes.
In September, another Ohio woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison for giving an infant an adult dosage of Benadryl which led to the baby’s death, Fox News reported.
Four infants and toddlers in Connecticut died of Benadryl overdose within a one-year span, Mass Live reported earlier in 2017.
"We had people from poison control come in and talk to us about these incidents which are far more widespread than I imagined," Windham County State's Attorney Anne Mahoney told the Norwich Bulletin. "It's a much more common practice than I thought, with many parents thinking this is an okay thing to do."
The state of Connecticut issued a health alert about the infant deaths that said an online poll in 2011 surveying more than 26,000 mothers found that one in five give their children drowsy medicine such as Benadryl or Dramamine “to get through” a lengthy event and 12 percent admitted giving it to their children to help them sleep.
Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D. of Seattle Children's Hospital said in her blog, “the response to Benadryl is inconsistent between kids and can be dangerous.”
“Using a medication for your convenience is never an indication for medication in a child,” she wrote.
This story was originally published December 20, 2017 at 10:24 AM with the headline "This mother gave her 3-month old Benadryl to calm him down. He never woke up.."