The prize for the earliest picture goes to Benjamin West's "The Golden Age" (1776), a sentimental portrait of a mother and her sleeping child.

WSJ: Fifty Has Seldom Looked So Good Bared | The Naked Museum | Sheldon Museum of Art | By Willard Spiegelman

She held the sleeping child at a gathering with reporters Wednesday at the same hospital, Jackson Memorial, where she had transplant surgery in 2007.

NPR: 5-Organ Transplant Patient Gives Birth: Baby Girl

His thirst insane, the tiger lapped up water from the leaky fountain where the flower women filled their buckets, and then put his nose into the face of a sleeping child who had been left, wrapped in blankets, under the pancake stand.

NEWYORKER: The Tiger��s Wife

Dylan's body was found almost four days later by a walker who noticed what he thought was a child "sleeping in the sand".

BBC: Dylan Cecil sea fall inquest: Parents absolved of blame

Then I found another child about 14 was sleeping on the floor in the same room.

BBC: In Pictures

Fyodorov still remembered the surprise he had felt when, as a child, he had cautiously watched sleeping dogs, cats, and chickens.

NEWYORKER: Among Animals and Plants

Does your child have a normal daily rhythm of sleeping and waking?

CNN: Angelman syndrome

Xiong Gang, a government worker in Lushan county, said that when the quake struck he was sleeping in his sixth-floor apartment with his wife and child, and he immediately hid them in the bathroom.

WSJ: Quake Kills More Than 160 in Sichuan

In the case of the Mississippi baby, we know she was exposed to HIV, had HIV in her blood, and that at least some cells in her blood were found with sleeping virus though we will likely never know if those cells were from the child or maternal cells that had been transmitted during pregnancy or birth.

WSJ: Mark Siedner: About That Baby Who Was 'Cured' of HIV

The young child could not wake her and so she called 999 and told emergency services her mother was sleeping and would not wake up.

BBC: Innerleithen girl Rowan Rychel honoured for 999 call