A mother living in North Strathfield held her six-month-old
baby's head under the water in a bathtub
on 18 November 2010, until the child stopped breathing. The
woman then called triple zero to report that her daughter had
fallen from her bath seat and drowned.
Despite the operator pleading with the mother to go back into
the bathroom to retrieve her baby from the water, all the woman
kept saying was "I can't go in there". And later that
same day, the mother was admitted into the psychiatric ward of
Concord Hospital.
At trial, the NSW Supreme Court heard that for months the woman
had been obsessed about her baby having dwarfism or some other
genetic disorder. And psychiatrists testified that within 24 hours
of giving birth, her prior schizoaffective disorder spiralled into
postpartum psychosis.
