A woman told the Lucy Letby probe she had a mother’s “instinct” about the nurse who killed her baby daughter, but people thought she was “bonkers” when she wanted to call police.

Child D’s tearful mum said she and her husband’s world “crumbled” when the newborn died in the middle of the night after neonatal nurse Letby attacked her three times.

Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2015 to 2016.

Mother D told the Thirlwall Inquiry at Liverpool Town Hall yesterday that she “felt uneasy” when Letby was in the same room as doctors monitored her daughter.

She said: “I had what someone would call instinct. Lucy Letby was just there in the room and she had no reason to be there…she was just around, waiting.

“I told my husband, ‘Why is she here?

Tell her to go’. She was just watching us.”

The mum added: “I remembered seeing that same person again at the time of death.

“I don’t know why she stood out. I did not catch her doing anything in particular. I just remember thinking, ‘This person does not belong, why is she here?’.” Letby’s trial heard that in text messages with colleagues while discussing Child D’s death, she had said there was an “element of fate” and “sometimes things happen”.

Mother D, who called the comments “disgusting”, said in hindsight, given her suspicions about Letby and her fight for the truth from hospital bosses, she would have called in detectives herself.

But she added: “When I first mentioned involving the police, everyone thought I was bonkers. They said it’s not criminal, there’s nothing more to it, it’s sad but your baby passed because she was poorly.”

Child D’s mum joined other parents in criticising the NHS trust for attempts to “cover up” the truth and said she “lost herself completely” fighting for answers.

She also claimed despite her waters breaking three weeks early, hospital staff failed to follow protocols and left her waiting another two days before she was finally rushed for an emergency C-section.

Mother D told the inquiry: “If I wasn’t failed in the first place in dozens of ways… my daughter wouldn’t have ended up in intensive care, I wouldn’t have been poorly and…she wouldn’t have been in a place where someone was preying on babies.

“As a strict minimum, they owe us an apology, they owe the babies an apology and all the families who have suffered.”