Baby who swallowed mom’s tablets buried

   One month after Nita Lutchman celebrated the first birthday of her son, Anekin Charles, the Princes Town mother had to lay the child to rest yesterday. He died on Monday at the San Fernando General Hospital after he swallowed 17 of his mother’s ferrous sulphate (iron vitamins) tablets at their home, Buen Intento Road, Princes Town, on Sunday. He was buried in the public cemetery following a service at the family home.Yesterday, utchman, 17, who is six months pregnant, could not look at the child’s photograph which hung above a wreath on the front wall of the family’s home.  Lutchman, in an interview yesterday, said she pleaded with taxi drivers to help her and they refused to take her to the Princes Town Hospital.

 

 

She said: “The ambulance tell me to wait but I run out the road holding Anekin in my hands and every taxi I stopped they say they not going to the hospital. “Only a woman taxi I stop see the child sick and she carry me to the hospital. I wait so long for a taxi.”  Lutchman said when she arrived at the hospital Anekin was taken into a room. His stomach was flushed. “He was critical. They send him to ICU (Intensive Care Unit) and he lost his breath. They tell me he was in shock and not moving. He was vomiting plenty,” she said. Anekin died on Monday around 3 am. An autopsy by pathologist Hubert Daisley said the child died from eating a toxic substance. Lutchman said she awoke around 6 am on Sunday and saw Anekin putting one of the tablets, which she had to take because of her pregnancy, in his mouth.

 

She said she jumped off the bed and put her finger in his mouth and he vomited the tablet. Her husband, Ochin Charles, 27, was asleep in the next room. She said the tablets were on her chest of drawers and Anekin, who could stand on his own, stretched and took them. The mother said the child might have knocked the cover off the bottle and swallowed the tablets. She said the bottle had 30 tablets, three of which she already had taken.

Eleven of the tablets were found in the bedroom. She said doctors told her Anekin ate 17. Constable Persad is continuing investigations.