Lucy Letby: Baby's deterioration was unexpected, fellow nurse tells jury

A colleague of nurse Lucy Letby has told a court she was surprised when she came back from a break to find a baby suddenly receiving urgent treatment.

Ms Letby is accused of attempting to murder the premature girl, referred to as Child G, three times at the Countess of Chester Hospital in September 2015.

She denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others.

The colleague, who cannot be named, told Manchester Crown Court the baby's deterioration was "unexpected".

The court has heard the baby had projectile vomited after 02:00 BST on 7 September 2015 and her abdomen appeared "purple and distended".

The jury was told her oxygen levels dropped and she stopped breathing several times over the next few hours before she responded to breathing support on ventilation.

The prosecution alleges Ms Letby, originally of Hereford, overfed Child G with milk through a nasogastric tube or injected air into the same tube.

Her colleague, who was the baby's designated nurse, said she gave Child G a routine feed of 45ml of breast milk via tube before going for her break and the baby was stable.

She told the court she returned to find Child G had been moved to the intensive care unit and was surrounded by staff.

"If I was concerned, I wouldn't have gone," she said.

"For example, if she looked unwell or her monitor was alarming or if she hadn't tolerated her feed or woke up upset."

"There were staff with [Child G] and they told me she had been unwell while I had been on my break."

She told prosecutor Simon Driver the baby's condition was "unexpected... because she was fed and settled when I left her and there had not been any observations on her chart which caused me any concern".

However, she agreed with Ben Myers KC, defending, that she was not trained in intensive care at the time so her duties on the night would have been appropriately passed to Ms Letby.

The court later heard from Ailsa Simpson, who was the nursing shift leader.

She said the mood on the neonatal unit had been "calm" and Child G had appeared in "good condition", but she had later heard the baby suddenly vomit at 02:15 as she was sitting with Ms Letby at a nursing station metres away.

She said the "large milky digested vomit" was "loud enough to hear" and had "gone from over the cot and on to a chair next to her".

She said an alarm also sounded, signalling the baby's oxygen levels and heart rate had dropped, and she and Ms Letby immediately went to the room.

Ms Simpson said she sat the child up and a face mask was used to assist with the baby's breathing, as another colleague went to call for help.

Mr Myers questioned the accuracy of her memory of the shift alongside statements she had made to police years later.

He put it to Ms Simpson that she did not have "images in her head" for all the events and was referring to notes, which she accepted.

She agreed that his suggestion that "seven years after the event, it's almost impossible to know how long something took" was "fair".

The prosecution alleges Ms Letby made two further attempts to murder Child G on 21 September.

The jury has previously been told the baby survived but suffered irreversible brain damage and was left with a number of conditions, including quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

The trial continues.

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