She had the perfect job and marriage.
So when a young Sydney mother gave birth to a girl she believed was a "dwarf", she resented the baby and wanted to be "rid" of her.
The mother, who cannot be identified, was found guilty on Thursday of murdering her six-month-old daughter, who was discovered floating in the bathtub of her home in Sydney's inner west on November 18, 2010.
The 39-year-old had faced a special hearing this month after she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and deemed unfit to stand trial.
But in a marathon judgment, Justice Geoffrey Bellew found that although she was experiencing emerging symptoms of the mental illness at the time of her baby's death, it was not at a level that stopped her functioning.
Instead, he found she had resented the baby girl and intentionally drowned her.
Describing the woman as a mother "obsessed with perfection", Justice Bellew said she had raised concerns with doctors shortly after the girl's birth about skin tags on her ears.
Noticing possible limb shortening, the pediatrician tested for achondroplasia, which is the medical term for dwarfism.
The tests came back negative.
Despite further testing and repeated assurances by doctors that the girl was healthy and "normal", the mother became increasingly anxious she was "seeing the signs of a dwarf" and her daughter would need "head surgery".
She told friends of regrets about being unable to give her husband the "perfect" baby and wondered why God was punishing her.
Two days before the girl's death, she told a friend that if her daughter did not fit into her "perfect family", she would "jump with her over a cliff or throw her into the bin".
She would rather deal with a baby with a terminal illness than one who was a "dwarf", the mother said.
Evidence had also been put before the court that the mother had searched online using words such as "drowning", "smothering" and "termination" before the child's death.
Justice Bellew rejected the mother's claim her baby had fallen out of her bath seat into the water and drowned in a "tragic accident" while she was in another room picking up an item.
It took between four to six minutes for a baby to drown and any trip to another room within the unit would take at most 30 seconds, he said.
When the mother called triple-zero and said her baby was in the bath, Justice Bellew said she refused the operator's repeated directions to retrieve her daughter from the water, saying "I can't go in there."
The woman, who had cried on and off throughout the judgment, remained expressionless as her bail was revoked and she was taken into custody for the first time.
The matter was referred to the Mental Health Review Tribunal and will return to court later this month.
Share
