A Coroner has repeated his warning that parents should not allow young children to share their bed, after hearing how a three-month old baby suffocated.

Marie Stepan had placed her baby, Chloe, beside her in a double bed at their home in Clayton, an inquest heard.

But when she woke up next morning, the child was lifeless.

Attempts to revive her failed, and a post mortem later showed she had died from suffocation.

Recording an accident verdict, Coroner Roger Whittaker said he had warned about the dangers in earlier "sad and tragic" cases.

He said it was a "potentially dangerous procedure" for young children to remain in the same bed as their parents.

"If any good is to come out of this tragedy it is that other parents may take notice that it's not a practice without potential problems and that sometimes it leads to tragedies of this type," added Mr Whittaker.

In a statement read to the hearing, Miss Stepan, of Thornaby Drive, described how she returned home after a night out and laid her daughter on top of a cushion on the double bed.

She said she then placed another cushion to one side to support Chloe's body, climbed into bed beside her and fell asleep.

The next morning Miss Stepan woke up and nudged her daughter, gently calling her name. But she did not move.

"The fact she was dead did not really sink in," said Miss Stepan.

She said she dialled 999 and tried to revive her daughter on the living room floor but she knew that her efforts had failed.

Dr Philip Batman, a consultant pathologist at Bradford Royal Infirmary, told the inquest that the evidence "swayed" him more towards asphyxia rather than cot death.

Mr Whittaker said: "Asphyxia is a deprivation of oxygen and it's possible that occurred as a result of either the way the child was positioned in bed or possibly because the baby may have been overlain.

"There is no evidence to say which of these happened but on the balance of probabilities I accept evidence from Dr Batman that sadly she died from asphyxia."