The parents of a newborn triplet begged for him to be moved to another hospital after his two brothers died within 24 hours, the trial of nurse Lucy Letby has heard.
Letby, 33, is accused of murdering the two babies, who cannot be named and are referred to as Child O and Child P, on successive days at the Countess of Chester hospital in June 2016.
Child P died as he awaited transfer after a series of unexplained collapses on 24 June.
A day earlier Child O was pronounced dead after he too suffered a number of collapses.
The parents of both boys pleaded with a transport ambulance team to take the surviving identical triplet with them on 24 June, Manchester crown court was told on Wednesday.
The boys’ father later told police: “We said, ‘There is no way he is staying at this hospital. You’ve got to take him, otherwise we are going to take him ourselves.’”
A doctor on the transport team agreed and the boys’ mother discharged herself after giving birth to the triplets just three days earlier, the court heard.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others between June 2015 and June 2016 at the neo-natal unit where she worked.
In a statement read to the court, the mother of the triplets said a doctor visited her on the labour ward on 23 June and told her Child O’s stomach had swollen but said “there was nothing to worry about”.
Shortly after she and her partner were greeted with a “scene of chaos” in intensive care nursery room 1 with “lots of medical staff rushing around” the cot of Child O.
She said: “The staff seemed to be in a state of panic and didn’t appear controlled at all.”
The mother said she sat outside the nursery in her wheelchair as “I couldn’t bring myself to go closer”.
Child O kept arresting, she said, and he “changed colour which I later saw with (Child P)” before he later died.
She said: “This whole episode had come like a bolt out of the blue. On the face of it everything seemed to be going well for the boys.
“It was never explained to us how this sudden downturn had happened. As a family we were devastated.
“We kept seeking reassurance that the other two boys were OK and the staff said they were fine.”
The following morning they checked on their wellbeing with a night shift nurse who told them they had been “little angels and had fed well”.
Several hours later a midwife came into the family room and said Child P was “really poorly” and they needed to go immediately to the neo-natal unit, she said. “I was devastated. I called my mum to tell her it was happening again,” she added.
Following Child P’s death she said Letby was “extremely upset and emotional”.
The boys’ mother added: “She was in pieces, almost as upset as we were.”
Letby took the two babies’ bodies to them before they left Chester, the mother said. She had dressed Child P and taken photographs of the boys for a “memory box” that was routinely given to bereaved parents, the court heard. “[Letby] was in floods of tears,” she said.
The trial continues.
