Lucy Letby tried to kill a baby hours after she helped make a banner to mark the girl becoming 100 days old, a court heard.
The baby reached the milestone after she was born “very, very prematurely”, weighing only 535 grams.
Doctors at Wirral’s Arrowe Park Hospital gave the girl a 5 per cent chance of survival but she stabilised and months later was well enough to be transferred to the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Weeks later, on the evening of 6 September 2015, nursing staff on the neonatal unit, including Ms Letby, put up a party banner in celebration of the baby’s 100th day of life.
The infant’s parents joined in the celebrations as a cake was brought into the unit, Manchester Crown Court heard.
They later went home but received a call in the early hours of the next morning to say their daughter had vomited.
Medics noted the baby, referred to as Child G, had projectile vomited at about 2am and her abdomen appeared “purple and distended”.
Her oxygen levels dropped and she stopped breathing several times over the next few hours before she responded to breathing support on ventilation.
The Crown says Ms Letby overfed Child G with milk through a nasogastric tube or injected air into the same tube.
On the afternoon of 7 September she messaged an on-duty colleague, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, to ask if Child G was going to be transferred from the Countess of Chester.
The colleague said the girl was “improving a bit now” but noted that her leg and arm “both went white”.
Ms Letby replied: “Not well at all, is she. Poor parents.”
She later messaged: “How are parents?”
The colleague said: “Devastated but determined she’ll get through ‘as always’. Thought that if she got to 100 then they would feel confident she’d be fine.”
Ms Letby said: “Awful isn’t it. We’d all been sat at desk at start of the shift making banner.”
The defendant later told her colleague: “Needs to go out.”
The colleague replied: “Too sick to move.”
Ms Letby said: “Oh no. Any idea what’s caused it?”
The colleague said: “Nope. Just seems to be a circ (circulatory) collapse, chest seems clear.”
