Lucy Letby: ‘Baby killed by nurse showed intermittent signs of life for FIVE HOURS’

A baby reportedly killed by nurse Lucy Letby showed interrupted signs of life for five hours after a crash medical team called off their desperate efforts to resuscitate him, a court heard today.

Baby C’s heart and breathing restarted weakly as he was cuddled by his parents in a family room at Countess of Chester Hospital.

Medical personnel had initially gone over the normal 20-minute threshold recommended for CPR twice to continue once a baby has failed to respond.

And they went on to perform “symbolic” CPR for another hour so that the child had time to be baptized by both a Catholic priest and a Church of England vicar.

Earlier today, the court heard that a senior nurse on duty with alleged baby killer Letby had to repeatedly tell her to get out of a room. Baby C’s parents spent their last moments with their son after she was involved in failed attempts to resuscitate him.

The Countess of Chester Hospital shift director said she wanted Letby, 32, focus on caring for a baby boy she considered the worst newborn in the neonatal ward that night.

Instead, the woman now on trial for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder another ten babies continued to enter the family room occupied by baby C’s parents.

They had gone there within minutes of a crash team halting their efforts to resuscitate him following his sudden and unexpected collapse on June 14, 2015.

dr. John Gibbs, a pediatrician who had worked at the hospital for 20 years, told the Manchester Crown Court jury: ‘Surprisingly, there were some signs of life as we waited for the two ministers.

‘I did not expect that. I wasn’t sure what to do at first because we had stopped full CPR. We only performed token CPR to get him baptized.

“I’m not sure why his breathing—occasional gasp—and his heart started beating again.

“It was five hours (later) when finally there was no heartbeat and no more gasping reactions.”

By this time, Dr. Gibbs was back home, but he remembered a colleague, Katherine Davis, a pediatric registrar in the department, who had called him several times.

“She called me—I can’t remember how many times—to say, ‘Baby C is still breathing.’

The consultant said he did not want to give the impression that he was blaming the parents for their decision to continue CPR while the two ministers made their way to the hospital.

‘I don’t blame them. It’s not their fault. The mistake is that his heart and breathing restarted – and that shouldn’t happen.

“I can’t think of any natural disease process that could cause the heart to restart later if you haven’t been able to restart it with CPR.

That suggests that the catastrophic event that caused his death was reversed. I don’t understand that from a natural disease process’.

Mr Gibbs said that when staff became aware of the intermittent signs of life returning to the child, they gave him palliative care. They realized that by this time he had suffered severe brain damage.

“It’s very hard to know what a 30-weeker feels like,” he told the jury. “We don’t know if he was feeling sad, but we knew he hadn’t been fed and would have been dehydrated by then.

“It was therefore appropriate to give him morphine to relieve any pain.”

Nurse B, who cannot be named by name for legal reasons, said Melanie Taylor, Band 6’s co-nurse, wanted to offer the family a keepsake box containing hand and footprints and a lock of hair.

But she had only “partially” done that. The rest of the process was carried out by Letby, unsolicited.

Speaking from behind a screen at Manchester Crown Court, Nurse B said: ‘When? [Baby C] went to the family room with his parents and grandparents, I reassigned everyone who had been in nursery 1 to different babies.

“I asked Lucy to focus on N3 again because I was still worried about him. However, Lucy went into the family room a few times and I asked her to come out and leave that family with Mel.”

When asked by Simon Driver, the prosecutor, if Letby had any reason to go in, she replied: ‘Not that I can remember. It was more than once. I don’t remember how often.’

She agreed with Ben Myers, KC, who argued that his client had been involved in the failed CPR attempts.

But when he asked her to confirm that Letby had later gone back to N3 as instructed, she replied, “Yes – after asking several times.”

Baby C’s father has previously told the jury that Letby interrupted them when his life drained into the family room following the attempts at CPR.

His wife was upset that her newborn baby was still panting and having a heartbeat. A doctor had to explain that it was a brainstem reaction and to comfort him, the baby was given morphine.

The father said a nurse he believed to be Letby came in with a ventilated basket and reportedly told the couple, “You said goodbye. Do you want me to put it here?’

“This comment shocked us,” he recalled in a written statement. My wife said, ‘He’s not dead yet’.

“The nurse backed off and tried to defuse the situation, but I couldn’t believe she’d said that.”

In a statement to police on Feb. 13, 2018, Nurse B had referred to the ward manager as “fighting” for more staff.

She told Mr Myers that this was ‘not just a Chester problem’, adding: ‘We worked really hard – we missed breaks to make it work.’

Mr Myers: ‘In general, if staff were to struggle to cope, would that affect baby care?’

Nurse B: ‘I didn’t say the staff was having a hard time.’

Mr. Myers: “If so, could that affect the babies?”

The nurse replied, “The care would have been provided because the nurses missed their breaks.”

She agreed that C was a baby ‘in a potentially vulnerable state’, and that there was a risk ‘he could die’.

However, she told Mr Driver that she believed the boy Letby was caring for in N3 was more at risk.

‘I was worried about him. In my opinion, he was the poorest baby in the ward that night. I checked (him) regularly to make sure he was getting what he needed.’

Mr. Driver asked, “Was he?”

Nurse B replied, ‘I think he should have had a septic screen, so ‘No’ is the answer. But that’s a medical decision. The medical decision was that he was fine. I don’t believe that’s true.’

dr. Katherine Davis, a pediatric registrar at the hospital, said there had been a “prolonged attempt” to resuscitate the child, but this was eventually abandoned.

“It became clear that we were not winning. We had no heartbeat.’

She said it was noted that a capnograph performed during the CPR attempts had detected carbon dioxide being released from the baby. “Unexpectedly,” he gasped and at that moment had a heartbeat.

She was later informed by one of the relatives that baby C had died. She went to the family room to confirm.

Mr. Myers, before Letby, told her, “He was right on the edge of what the Countess of Chester could handle, wasn’t he?”

dr. Davis replied, “I think our limit was 800 grams, and he was 800 grams.”

She said the child “didn’t get sick” despite the measurements of dark galaspirations.

“It’s not something we should ignore, it’s something we should keep an eye on… but I don’t think we should have done anything else.”

While dark bile was “not normal,” it was also “not uncommon” in premature babies.

When Mr Myers suggested that Baby C should have been seen before his third day of life, she said the child’s case would have been discussed.

dr. Davis said that when she reached Nursery 1, the nurses did everything they could.

Philip Astbury, prosecutor, asked if she had ever seen a collapse as sudden or unexpected as Baby C’s.

dr. Davis replied, “Absolutely not.”

She said she had seen many babies with severe stomach problems, along with babies with NEC [necrotising enterocolitis]but they didn’t “behave or die the way” Baby C did.

Letby denies all charges and her trial continues.