Monica Thompson had given birth to her first child, a baby boy, and was almost ready to take him home from the hospital.

It was nearly midnight one Sunday in the summer of 2012 when Thompson, who had undergone a caesarean section a few days earlier, was given a cocktail of narcotic painkillers and sleep aids.

Jacob Thompson was four days old when he died. Credit:Thompson family/Diego Conde

A nurse took the newborn to his mother for breastfeeding and put the child next to her in her hospital bed at Adventist Medical Centre in Portland, Oregon.

An hour later, Thompson, "still drowsy and groggy," realised that her son, Jacob, was not moving.