Woman pleads guilty to injecting baby son with insulin

The case against an East Meath woman who twice gave her infant son insulin was adjourned at Trim Circuit Court which heard her actions could have been catastrophic for the youngster.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to charges of assault causing harm to the child on 28th September 2018 at an unknown location when the boy was two-and-a-half years old, and then nine months later on 12th June at a location in East Meath.

The court heard the child had a history of seizures and when the woman called an ambulance on the date of the first offence as he was feverish and having a seizure, he was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda.

Medics could not record a blood sugar level but found abnormally high levels of insulin in the child's system and he was transferred to Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin where he made a recovery.

Tests on the child ruled out the youngster having an inherited metabolic disorder, a garda told prosecuting counsel Carl Hanahoe BL.

Checks on the child's insulin levels in the following months found they were normal and were slightly less than one hundredth of those in the previous September.

On 12th June 2019 the boy was taken ill and again admitted to the Drogheda hospital with low blood sugar levels and the following day taken to Temple Street where he was again found to have extraordinarily high levels of insulin as he had the previous September.

A succession of tests were carried out and eventually a brand of rapid acting insulin as used by an elderly diabetic relative of the defendant was indentified by experts at Cologne University in Germany as the cause of the child's problem.

The woman at first denied injecting the child but later admitted what she had done saying she was afraid her son was also diabetic and she felt she had to do something or he would die.

The court heard the young boy was not diabetic and now seemed to have made a full recovery.

In a victim impact statement, the boy's father outlined his feeling of helplessness as he watched his son in hospital and then finding out the truth which he said turned his life upside down.

He said he felt he lost his wife on the day he found out what she had done. A defence barrister said his client acknowledged her responsibility and guilt and was ashamed and remorseful.

Judge Martina Baxter adjourned the case to April when a sentence date will be set.