Your baby just stopped breathing...
What mum was told on ward where ‘killer nurse’ worked
THE mother of a premature baby allegedly murdered by nurse Lucy Letby struggled to take in the news that her son had stopped breathing ‘without warning’, a court heard yesterday.
The newborn, referred to as Baby C, was ‘doing all that was expected of him’ after being born weighing just 1lb 12oz (0.8kg) at the Countess of Chester Hospital and taken to the neonatal unit, his mother said in a statement.
But days later the woman – who was on a post-natal ward – said she was woken up and told to go and see her son ‘urgently’. Letby, 32, is accused of murdering Baby C – one of seven babies she is said to have killed – by
‘You’ve said your goodbyes’
inserting air into his stomach via a nasogastric tube. The mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was told his heart rate suddenly dropped and he stopped breathing ‘without warning’.
The court heard she didn’t ‘ take in the severity’ of what was happening until a nurse asked whether she wanted someone to call a priest.
Manchester Crown Court also heard a statement from her husband who said Letby – who he now recognised from photos in newspapers – was one of two nurses with them before the infant died. He said one of the nurses, who could have been Letby, brought a ventilator basket in and said: ‘You’ve said your goodbyes, do you want me to put him in here?’ He said it shocked them as their son was not dead at that point.
The trial also heard how Letby told a colleague she needed to return to the hospital room where another baby died days earlier to ‘get the image out of my head’.
She is said to have murdered Baby A, a newborn twin boy, on June 8 2015 by injecting air into his bloodstream in ‘room 1’ of the intensive car unit. On June 9, she is said to have attempted to murder his twin sister using the same method. On the evening of June 13 – when Baby C was being cared for in room 1 – she was assigned to room 3, the trial heard.
In a WhatsApp exchange with a colleague a little over an hour before Baby C’s sudden deterioration, Letby wrote: ‘I just feel I need to be in 1 to get the image out of my head. To be in 3 is eating me up.’ Her colleague said she would be the ‘complete opposite.’
Letby responded: ‘I know how I feel and how I have dealt with it before.’ Later in the exchange, Letby said she would be ‘fine’ and it was ‘part of the job’.
Twenty minutes later, Baby C rapidly deteriorated and died in the early hours of the next day. Ben Myers KC, defending, said Baby C was vulnerable and should have been at a specialist children’s hospital. Letby denies the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of ten others between June 2015 and June 2016. The trial continues.