The parents of Child G have told the Thirlwall Inquiry at their shock of only learning how their baby daughter suffered severe brain damage at the hands of Lucy Letby during the nurse's criminal trial.

The mother of Child G, who Letby attempted to murder twice, said the former Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit nurse had “ruined our lives”.

The Thirlwall Inquiry has been hearing evidence this week from families at Liverpool Town Hall into how former neonatal unit nurse Letby was able to commit her crimes at the hospital in 2015 and 2016, and the delays in reporting events to the police.

Letby targeted the baby girl by overfeeding her with milk and pushing air down her feeding tube on September 7 and September 21, 2015.

Child G had been transferred to the Countess of Chester Hospital, having initially been born at a gestational age of just 23 weeks and six days and cared for at Wirral's Arrowe Park Hospital.

In a statement read on behalf of Mother G, she said: "She was so tiny and her skin was almost see-through, but I was absolutely filled with love for her. She was our little miracle, our gift from God."

Child G sustained severe brain damage and requires round-the-clock care and support, the inquiry heard.

Mother G said: “I feel Lucy Letby has ruined our lives. She has ruined everything.

“Our daughter needs 24-hour care because of Letby. We don’t know how long she will live. It affects every single minute of all our days.

“For years we thought our daughter had suffered from neonatal sepsis and aspirated her vomit, causing her brain damage and making (her) the way she is now.

“We only found out years later that the blood tests that had been done at the time showed no evidence our daughter was suffering from sepsis.

“We thought our daughter’s brain injury was God’s will. We couldn’t do anything about it and we just had to accept it.

“Our poor daughter, oh my God, our precious little fighter who didn’t have much chance being so premature. Then when she was doing well, Lucy Letby made her collapse and caused her brain injury.

“I feel that the Countess of Chester have covered up what happened to our daughter for years. To my mind, the Countess of Chester was more concerned about their reputation than about our daughter’s life.”

Fighting back tears as he read through his own statement, Child G’s father said he did not understand the sepsis diagnosis as her brain had been “developing well” and she had been “improving” at Wirral’s Arrowe Park Hospital before she was transferred to the Countess of Chester Hospital.

He said: “The doctors didn’t tell us on September 7 our baby daughter in fact had a projectile vomit with the milk coming out of her tiny little body with so much force that it reached the chairs opposite the cot.

“They also didn’t tell us that… upon then aspirating the contents of our daughter’s stomach they found 45ml of milk which was an enormous amount of milk and more than her feed.

“We only found this out at the criminal trial.

“Moreover they didn’t tell us that she stopped breathing twice on September 21.

“It came as a big shock.”

Both said the lack of communication which came from the Countess of Chester Hospital was "inadequate".

The inquiry heard the first they knew of Letby's deliberate harm towards their baby was when the father was called by police on the morning Letby was arrested in July 2018.

The mother recalled in her statement: "I could not breathe, I was in shock...it broke my heart."

The mother also recalled, of Letby: "I didn't particularly like Lucy Letby. To me she looked miserable and she did not look like she enjoyed [her work]. I just thought she was not very good at her job," adding she never thought she would harm Child G.

Letby, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

The inquiry is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.