KEY POINTS:
The practice of parents sleeping with babies is expected to be held responsible for New Zealand slipping down the cot death rankings after a Wellington coroner's inquests into the deaths of seven young babies yesterday.
"This is not a witch-hunt," Garry Evans told each family yesterday as, one by one, young mothers and fathers took the witness stand to tell the story of their baby's tragic deaths.
"We don't blame you for your loved one's death."
He reserved his findings until the New Year but made no secret of his dissatisfaction that the practice of co-sleeping, and other "unsafe" sleeping practices, had not been discouraged enough.
Officials and media sobbed as grieving mothers took the witness stand to tell the story of their babies' last hours.
Some mothers wore vague, blank expressions and had obviously retreated into themselves to cope. Others, like Zantana Meihana, 19, were overwhelmed with emotion, her raw sobs causing all but the most stoic to weep with her.
All mothers were young. All were Maori. All either slept with their babies or had slept them on their tummies or on pillows where they had been found face down or partly covered in a blanket. Each had stories about how their babies had been lovingly wrapped, tucked into bed, fed and kissed before they'd woken to find them dead several hours later.
"Do you think," Mr Evans asked Ms Meihana, "that you could have rolled on to baby in the night?"
"I think I did!" she moaned before collapsing into her father Frank. More than a year after she had woken to find one-month-old Pro Junior lifeless next to her, Ms Meihana could barely shuffle to the witness stand under the weight of sadness.
Mr Meihana said the family had been profoundly affected by the death. They feared they'd be judged.
"At the time, the Kahui twins thing was going on," the large, dreadlocked man told the coroner, his voice breaking into his tears. "I did not want any of that coming on to my family."
The court also heard about the deaths of Yozahliyah Taipeti, Tristan Rapata-Warbrick, Nephi Tito-George, Reipai Harris, Indiah Hawkins and Yozahne Aki-Hosay.
Mr Evans told the families that although the inquests were taxing they deserved more than a diagnosis under the "veil" of sudden infant death syndrome.
"As if [Sids] was some monster gobbling up their little children," he said. Parents needed to know what had really gone wrong.
While parents were warned that co-sleeping could be dangerous, especially when the parent was drunk, drugged or overweight, in some cases yesterday none of those factors was present.
