A court has heard that a nurse who is on trial for several killings at a hospital neo-natal unit attempted to murder a baby girl two hours after her birth.
Just as a consultant entered the room, Lucy Letby, 33, allegedly purposefully dislodged the extremely preterm infant’s breathing tube.
When the infant, known as Child K, was delivered at 25 weeks of gestation and placed into the neo-natal ward in February 2016, Letby was working a night shift at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
As the infant’s designated nurse left the room to go to the labor ward, she is accused of tampering with the tube.
On Monday, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told Manchester Crown Court: ‘It is alleged Lucy Letby interfered with the endotracheal (ET) tube and Dr Ravi Jayaram walked in to the immediate aftermath of that.’
Child K was born at 2.12am – but by 3.50am there was a ‘sudden deterioration’ in her condition, as her blood oxygen levels dropped to 40%, jurors heard.
The breathing tube was then removed and her oxygen rate ‘recovered pretty quickly’ after she received rescue breaths through a facemask, the court was told.
A new ET was put in and an X-ray taken at 6.07am showed it was in a ‘satisfactory position’, the court heard.
Eight minutes later the tube had to be adjusted after Dr Jayaram noted Child K’s oxygen levels had dipped again.
The tube was withdrawn again when Dr Jayaram noted at 7.25am that it had ‘slipped’ 8cm at the lips.
Child K was transferred to specialist hospital Arrowe Park in Wirral but died three days later.
The Countess of Chester typically didn’t care for babies of 25 weeks gestation but Arrowe Park was full so the infant had to wait until a bed was available, jurors heard.
Her cause of death was certified as severe respiratory disease and extreme prematurity.
Mr Johnson told the court: ‘We are not alleging what Lucy Letby did actually caused her death.’
Letby conducted a Facebook search for the parents’ surname in April 2018, three months before she was arrested.
After a discussion with hospital medics, Child K’s mother and father made a decision to ‘switch off the machines and let her go’, the court heard.
The mum described the decision as ‘by far the hardest of my life’.
She said in a statement: ‘I remember saying to the doctor that (Child K) had been poked and prodded from the moment she was born.
‘Her tiny little delicate body had swollen up so much.
‘We didn’t want her to be suffering anymore.’
Ben Myers KC, defending Letby, told the court in his opening address last October that the ‘probable cause’ for the tube being dislodged at 3.50am was the infant inadvertently moving it herself.
Her case was another example of ‘sub-optimal care’ in that she should have received more specialist treatment, Mr Myers said.
Letby broke down in tears and abruptly got out of her seat in the dock when a doctor began giving evidence at the trial earlier this month.
The witness, a registrar at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2016, told the court about his care of Child L, a twin boy born prematurely.
The prosecution allege Letby tried to murder the baby by poisoning him with insulin.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of 10 others, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The trial continues.