Please don’t let my baby die... mum’s cry ‘after nurse’s fatal jab’
THE mother of a twin allegedly murdered by children’s nurse Lucy Letby begged medics ‘please don’t let my baby die’ after his condition suddenly deteriorated, a court heard yesterday.
However doctors were unable to save him – and the following night his twin sister suffered a similar, unexplained collapse, jurors were told.
This time the tiny newborn pulled through, but the ‘frantic’ mother went on to spend every day at the surviving twin’s bedside, calling every two hours during the night until she was allowed home.
When each twin fell ill, ‘malevolent’ Letby – who is accused of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of ten others at Countess of Chester Hospital – was on duty, Manchester Crown Court heard.
in both cases, the 32-year-old is said to have injected an excess amount of air into the babies’ bloodstreams. The prosecution said there is ‘no plausible alternative’ which explains the twins’ deterioration just 24 hours apart in such similar circumstances.
in the first evidence from parents of Letby’s alleged victims, jurors heard how the twins’ mother and father were watching Tv in a side room of a neo-natal unit following an emergency caesarean section when nursing staff told them to ‘come quick’.
The mother of Baby A – who, like her son, cannot be named for legal reasons – said it felt like there were ‘ hundreds of people were standing over his cot and trying to resuscitate him’.
The baby boy’s grandmother recalled that ‘i knew he was gone’ as soon as she entered the room, adding: ‘He was blue.’
She added that his mother was ‘sobbing uncontrollably’ and begging: ‘Please don’t let my baby die, please don’t let my baby die.’
After they were told that he would have brain damage and further complications if he survived, the grandmother said she told her daughter: ‘You need to let him go.’
Eventually she relented and ‘simply nodded her head’ to the doctors to stop chest compressions, she added.
The jury has heard that Letby was the only nurse to witness Baby A’s collapse, which occurred around the time she set up a glucose infusion. Feeling ‘frantic, anxious and extremely upset’ after the death of Baby A, his mother said she did not want the surviving twin, Baby B, ‘to be out of my sight’.
Eventually she and her partner were persuaded to get some rest – but she said ‘the next thing i know we were getting woken up by a nurse’. ‘My heart sank,’ she said. ‘not my baby. not again.’
nursing staff told them Baby B had stabilised after going through a ‘very similar situation’ to her brother, with a rapid fall in heart rate and oxygen levels, the court was told.
it heard that shortly earlier Letby had helped set up a bag of intravenous feed with another nurse – only for Letby to ‘sabotage’ her care, it is alleged.
The mother stayed with her baby all night, describing her as ‘restless... as if she was trying to tell me something was wrong’. Although the mother was discharged, she would arrive at her daughter’s bedside at 9am, she said, remaining until the evening shift change so she knew who was working nights.
Her and her partner would then set alarms on their phone at twohour intervals overnight so they could call for updates.
‘i was, and still am, extremely protective of her,’ she added.
Baby B does not appear to have suffered any adverse consequences, the court heard. The twins’ mother – who had a rare blood disorder – required an emergency caesarean section following a diagnosis of preeclampsia.
Baby B was born first on June 7, 2015 weighing 3lb 11oz and needed assistance with breathing problems, while her brother followed a minute later and weighed 3lb 12oz.
Their mother said after Baby A’s death she and her partner ‘searched for a reason why’ but ‘never really got’ answers.
Last week nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told jurors the collapses and deaths ‘were not natu
‘Things took a turn for the worse’
rally occurring tragedies’ but were instead the work of Letby, a ‘constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse’.
He showed them a chaotic scrawl on a post-it note in which Letby wrote: ‘i am evil, i did this.’
But Ben Myers KC, defending, said it was Letby’s case that the writing was not a confession but an ‘anguished outpouring of a young woman in fear and despair’ following her arrest. He told jurors last week that she was a ‘dedicated’ nurse who ‘cared deeply about the babies and their families’.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies all the offences which are said to have been committed between June 2015 and June 2016. The trial continues.