Lucy Letby trial: Mother found baby with blood on face, jury told

A mother found her baby son with blood on his face making "horrendous" sounds the evening before his death, the trial of nurse Lucy Letby has heard.

It is alleged Ms Letby injected air into the bloodstream of the baby, known as Child E, while at the Countess of Chester Hospital in June 2015.

Ms Letby has been charged with murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the hospital between 2015 and 2016.

The 32-year-old denies 22 charges.

The nurse, originally from Hereford, is accused of murdering Child E and attempting to murder his twin, Child F, the following day.

The court heard how the twins had been born prematurely and Ms Letby was the designated nurse for both boys.

One night, their mother, who was an inpatient on the postnatal ward, decided to visit her sons in the neonatal unit.

Child E's mother found her son acutely distressed and bleeding from his mouth.

Giving evidence, she said: "I could hear my son crying. I walked over to the incubator to see he had blood coming out of his mouth.

"I was panicking. I felt like there was something wrong."

The mother said Child E's crying "was a sound that shouldn't have come from a tiny baby".

"I can't explain what that sound was, it was horrendous," she added.

The mother asked Ms Letby, who is said to have been standing at a work station on the unit, what was wrong.

The nurse is said to have told her that Child E's feeding tube had rubbed his throat and caused the bleeding.

Ms Letby told her to go back to the ward, the court heard.

"She said the registrar was on his way and if there was a problem, someone would ring up to the post-natal ward," she said.

Upon returning to the postnatal ward, the mother called her husband to inform him as she felt "there was something very wrong".

She returned to the neo-natal ward later on that evening and sat in the corridor, watching a team of people around Child E's incubator.

The prosecution clarified this was at the time Child E was being unsuccessfully resuscitated.

Following the death of Child E, Ms Letby asked the mother if she would like to bathe her son.

Through tears, the mother told the court: "I was just broken. I couldn't. Lucy Letby bathed him in front of me in the neo-natal unit.

"After he was bathed, he was placed in a white gown.

"I just remember being thankful as we had no clothes for him as he was so little.

"He was given back to us, and put in his incubator, and that is where he stayed."

The mother added that she was given a "memory box" by Ms Letby which "totally surprised" her and included a memory card, a lock of his hair, a teddy and hand and footprints.

She said she was "so overcome with emotion" by that.

The court also heard about a series of text messages between Ms Letby and her colleagues.

In one, Ms Letby told a colleague she felt "numb" the morning after Child E died.

In response, her colleague said Ms Letby seemed to be "having some very bad luck", to which she answered: "Not a lot I can do really, he had a massive haemorrhage, could have happened to any baby".

In an exchange with another colleague, Ms Letby said the death was "heartbreaking" and she felt "sad" for his parents.

The jury was later shown Ms Letby's social media search history which revealed a number of searches had been carried out for the mother of Child E in the weeks and months following her son's death.

One search was carried out at 23:26 on Christmas Day in 2015.

Ben Myers KC, defending, clarified with police intelligence analyst Claire Hocknell that Ms Letby also searched for the names of parents who were not part of this case.

A court order bans the reporting of the identities of the children allegedly attacked by Ms Letby, while identifying parents or witnesses connected with the children is also banned.

The trial continues.

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