A newborn has been nicknamed ‘baby hulk’ after a rare condition caused her arms and chest to become ultra swole.

Armani Milby, from Campbellsville, Kentucky, has a severe form of lymphangioma, a condition that causes benign tumors to grow in the lymphatic vessels, tube-like structures that carry fluid around the body.

The swelling has caused her upper torso and arms to become disproportionately bulky compared to the rest of her body.

Armani’s mother Chelsey, 33, gave her daughter the affectionate nickname ‘mini Hulk’ when she was born because she looked ‘like a mini bodybuilder’.

Armani spent the first three months of her life in the hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she received specialist treatment to drain excess fluid from her arms.

She is now scheduled to undergo surgery to remove the excess lymph vessels to help reduce her arms and chest to a normal size.

She will also need further surgery to remove any excess skin left on her body.

Now that some fluid has been drained from her arms, however, her mother has switched to calling her ‘squishy’.

‘Now she’s squishy,’ Ms Milby said, ‘I just call her my little squishy baby. She’s doing very well.’

Her daughter’s condition, which can be caused by genetics or hormone problems, was diagnosed at week 17 of pregnancy.

Armani weighed 12lbs when she was born and made her mother look so large when she was pregnant that strangers would ask if she was having triplets.

Doctors gave Armani a ‘zero percent’ chance of survival, Ms Milby said, but the infant cried as soon as she was born via C-section at 33 weeks and has been fighting ever since.

Ms Milby, who has two other children, said she was left in tears after the news— saying she didn’t understand why her baby had the condition. 

Lymphangioma is when fluid-filled bumps, or cysts, form under the skin because the lymph vessels overgrow and stop draining fluid from the body.

The condition is rare, affecting about one in 4,000 children, and is normally diagnosed at birth or within the first few years of childhood.

Swelling is common in the head and neck area — because these areas have a relatively high concentration of lymph vessels compared to other parts of the body.

But they can also appear in other places like the chest and arms. Of those diagnosed with the condition in the womb, doctors say only 22 percent survive.

In surgery, doctors will cut out the abnormal lymphatic tissue in order to boost fluid drainage from the body and to stop the liquid from collecting.

Patients may also receive a procedure called Sclerotherapy — where a special medication is injected into the body that causes irritation and scarring to the abnormal lymphatic tissue, leading it to shrink and collapse.

Ms Milby said: ‘I had never, ever, heard of the diagnosis before and honestly, I had looked into it, and I didn’t really like the results with some of the pictures.

‘When I found out, to be honest, I was devastated, I was heartbroken. I didn’t understand what happened, what went wrong, because I had two other healthy babies, and I cried every day. Every day, I asked God why.’

But describing her daughter now, she said: ‘She has a lot of extra skin. It’ll all go away, and she’ll be the normal-looking baby. She’ll just have significant scarring from the surgeries and everything.

‘She got lucky. She’s not deformed or anything like that. I’ve actually seen some cases where they have and God bless them kids, they’re fighters.

‘She’s happy. She hardly ever cries unless she wants to be held. We’re trying to do everything for this baby and give her the best life possible.

‘She finally rolled over and she’s trying to say “momma”, I’m pretty sure, she’s getting really close.

‘She’s doing wonderful. She literally is my miracle baby, and we just love her so much.’

Describing the pregnancy, Ms Milby said: ‘My body was shutting down. Something was telling me it was time to get her out. I was almost 200 pounds, and my health was getting really bad.

‘I suffered every day; I could never sleep. I was extremely sick.

‘That’s why I had them take her at 33 weeks because my body was shutting down and it was getting harder every day to live life and actually breathe because I was so uncomfortable as I had to keep getting fluid drained out of my stomach.

‘To everyone’s surprise, she came out crying and everybody in the room was emotional. No one knew what was going to happen. It’s a very magical story.’

For her father, Blake, who was not allowed in the delivery room, the process was hard. 

He said: ‘I remember sitting outside in the hallway, they took me back there for the delivery and while they’re in there giving her an epidural, I was out there pacing the hall, just praying.

The operation was far from easy for Ms Milby, who suffered a panic attack soon after they started, but she said it was all worth it when she saw her baby’s face.

She said: ‘They had to give me something to calm me down because I was having a panic attack. I was screaming and crying.

‘I was just a wreck, it was horrible.

‘In the back of our minds, we were both wondering what was going to happen. However, she just shocked us all and proved everyone wrong.

‘When I actually saw her, I cried even more because I had never seen anything like that but I didn’t care what she looked like, I loved her anyway.

‘I had never seen anyone look like that before so I was just shocked to be honest, but grateful at the same time.’

After being born, Armani and her family were moved more than 100 miles away to Cincinnati for three months to be admitted to a specialist hospital where the baby began to make her recovery.

Ms Milby said: ‘I battled postpartum depression really bad, and I had to push that away to try to be the strongest person I could be for her and for my other two kids.

‘It’s been a rollercoaster ride. It really has been a rollercoaster ride and every day, I struggle a little bit.’

Armani is scheduled for surgery later this year where doctors will remove extra lymphatic vessels and over the coming years, she will need to undergo surgery to remove the extra skin.

Mark Ronson and Grace Gummer hold hands while taking their baby daughter for a walk in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood

By Sam Joseph Semon For Dailymail.com

Published: 02:50 EDT, 18 September 2023 | Updated: 02:50 EDT, 18 September 2023

Margot Robbie bares her long legs in denim shorts as she holds a friend’s baby during an outing in Los Angeles

By Ashleigh Gray For Dailymail.Com

Published: 13:07 EDT, 10 September 2023 | Updated: 14:03 EDT, 10 September 2023

Al Pacino‘s ex-girlfriend Noor Alfallah have split, and she has filed for custody of her three-month-old son with the actor, Roman Alfallah Pacino.

Alfallah, 29, filed legal docs in Los Angeles asking for full physical custody of the infant, adding that she wants the 83-year-old actor to have ‘reasonable visitation,’ The Blast reported after reviewing legal docs. 

Pacino and Alfallah had been romantically linked since April 2022, and welcomed their son June 6 at Cedar’s Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. 

According to the outlet, Alfallah told the court she was willing to grant the veteran film star joint legal custody of their young son, which would give him a say on matters related to education, religion, medical treatment and more. 

The Scarface leading man is already father to three children with two women: he shares 22-year-old twins Olivia Pacino and Anton James Pacino with Beverly D’Angelo; and Julie Pacino, 33, with Jan Tarrant. 

In her legal filing, Alfallah inserted a document titled ‘voluntary declaration of parentage,’ which both she and Pacino signed six days after they welcomed their son.

The document, which a third-party witness signed, acknowledged Pacino’s paternity of the child.

Alfallah in legal docs said she conceived the child in California after engaging in ‘sexual intercourse’ with the actor. 

Alfallah is requesting in court docs that Pacino pay for her lawyer fees or any other case-related costs, according to the outlet. 

A specific amount of child support was not stated in the court filing, according to the outlet.

According to The Blast, legal docs in the case stated that ‘the court may make orders for support of the children and issue an earnings assignment without further notice to either party.’

It was expected that the judge in the case would state an amount based off what Alfallah asks for in forthcoming hearings; there was no evidence to indicate that Pacino was opposed to any of the requests, the outlet reported. 

Alfallah and Pacino’s OB-GYN is Beverly Hills-based Thais Aliabadi, who delivered Khloe Kardashian’s child on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. 

Alfallah was previously in romances with Rolling Stones icon Mick Jagger and billionaire Nicolas Berggruen. 

She was seen out with Tinseltown icon Clint Eastwood, 93, in 2019, but said they were just family friends. The year before, she was seen out with Inglourious Basterds actor Eli Roth, 51.

Alfallah’s age gap with Pacino ‘doesn’t seem to be a problem,’ a source told Page Six in April of 2022, adding that the Kuwaiti-American film producer ‘mostly dates very rich older men’ and ‘moves with the wealthy jet-set crowd, and she comes from a family with money.’ 

Alfallah is a native of Beverly Hills and attended the UCLA School of Film and Television, later pursuing a career as a producer. 

Prior to the child’s birth in June, mystery surrounded the circumstances of the pregnancy after claims emerged the actor had demanded a pre-natal DNA test after refusing to believe he could ‘impregnate anybody’, only found out about the impending arrival in April and believed the relationship with Noor was ‘long over.’

This came after a source close to the couple confirmed to DailyMail.com on Wednesday that Pacino ‘could not be happier’ about the pregnancy, that he had not been kept in the dark about the baby for 11 weeks and that the pair were ‘very much in love.’ 

The source also pushed back at suggestions Alfallah is a ‘gold digger,’ and said she had wanted a baby for years. 

Around the timeframe, TMZ reported that Pacino initially doubted the child was his,  due to medical issues that would ‘commonly prevent a man from impregnating a woman.’

Insiders told the outlet that Pacino only found out about the pregnancy when Alfallah was six months in, and was ‘shocked’ at the revelation. Alfallah agreed to the DNA test, which confirmed Pacino was indeed the father.

Pacino and Alfallah’s relationship came under further scrutiny when it was alleged the actor thought the relationship was over a ‘long time ago’.

Sources claimed to Showbiz411 months back that Pacino was ‘hoodwinked’ by Noor and added: ‘She knew Al didn’t didn’t want to have more kids, they have no relationship, it’s a mess.’

Alfallah did not tell Pacino about the pregnancy for the first 11 weeks, sources told the outlet.

Alfallah is said to have grown closer to Pacino after becoming good friends with his daughter Olivia, whose mother is actress Beverly D’Angelo – who opened up about her longtime relationship with Pacino in an Instagram post in May. 

The 71-year-old actress said she decided to share details about her relationship with Pacino after her ‘dm box got filled up with questions’ on the topic.

‘My story with Al began 27 years ago, two artists meeting, falling in love,’ said D’Angelo. 

The actress, who played Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon’s Vacation franchise, said that they ‘lived together for seven years, had two children’ and eventually ‘broke up.’

Despite their split, she wrote, they ‘continued steadily on [their] journey as co parents- and came to share [their] lives with a deeper kind of intimacy, honesty and acceptance than a “traditional” relationship would have allowed.’

D’Angelo said that she and Pacino bonded through their mutual passion of their craft.

‘We’ve always been linked on the creative level – our conversations about acting, the search/need for expression – that’s a conversation that started in 96 and continues to this day,’ she said.

D’Angelo, who has been seen on the CBS series True Lies, called her relationship with the Dog Day Afternoon actor ‘unique’ and ‘encompassing a wide breadth/depth of experiences and emotions, through thick and thin, a true friendship.’

She added, ‘There are infinite layers in every intimate relationship – and for me, Instagram isn’t the place to go into detail really….. but I wanna make sure you know I see and hear you, so this vid is a little bare bones primer in response to your questions.’

She added that most importantly she received the approval of her children before posting their images and story to social media.

D’Angelo opened up in the clip about her start with the House of Gucci actor, saying, ‘I lived with Al for seven years and we have two children; in 1996, we were on the same plane going from Los Angeles to New York.

‘He was seated in front of me, he said come up and sit beside me and by the time the plane landed, it was on.’

She said that the following year, ‘He looked me in the eye and said, “I want you to be the mother of my children.”‘

She continued, ‘Although I’d avoided that role my while life, I was deeply in love and I was 100 percent in.’

She said that they completed a round of in vitro fertilization in 1997, and ‘with a lot of effort and the miracles of modern science,’ they welcomed their twins in 2001.

D’Angelo shared a slideshow of family shots of the twins in their younger years.

She said that eventually, things ‘got complicated’ and their ‘split was finalized in 2004.’

She added, ‘The power of our love for our children was the basis for resolving any conflicts and creating a new history as co-parents, leading individual lives separately but always intertwined as a family.’

She wrapped up in saying that she and the Any Given Sunday star continue to share ‘a unique and profound friendship between two artists that endures to this day – through thick and thin, 27 years now of doing it our way – and there you have it.’

A six-month-old boy prescribed an antiviral drug to treat Covid had a bizarre reaction – his dark brown eyes turned a bright blue within 18 hours of therapy.

The unnamed infant from Thailand was given favipiravir, a treatment commonly used for influenza and Ebola, which is approved as a Covid treatment in parts of Asia – but not yet approved in the US.

Doctors in Bangkok who treated the infant said the antiviral drug released a fluorescent chemical that accumulated in the boy’s corneas. 

While the boy’s eyes changed hue shortly after receiving the treatment, they returned to their natural color five days after medication cessation. 

In Thailand, favipiravir is the main antiviral given to children infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The most common side effects of the treatment include an increase of uric acid in the body, diarrhea and a low count of white blood cells, which account for roughly 20 percent of adverse events.

Favipiravir is approved in Japan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Moldova and Kazakhstan and received approval for emergency use in Italy in 2020.

The US began trialing the drug in April 2020 with a small group of 50 people at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to approve favipiravir in the US.

The report on the infant was published in April 2023, but the exact date of the side effect is unknown.

On day one, he received 82 milligrams, and 18 hours later, his mother noticed the eye color change.

‘No bluish discoloration was observed in other areas such as skin, nails, or oral and nasal mucosa. Symptoms improved after three days of favipiravir therapy,’ the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics.

An eye examination was performed after treatment was over.

‘The patient was able to fix and follow the light in all directions,’ reads the study. 

Researchers wrote that this fluorescence ‘may be due to the drug, its metabolites, or additional tablet components such as titanium dioxide and yellow ferric oxide.’

Several medications can affect the eye, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, blood thinners and antihistamines. 

A class of medication called prostaglandins, used to treat glaucoma, has a side effect of darkening the iris color that can be permanent.

Doctors also found the cornea was clear and lacked a bluish corneal hue, and no blue pigment deposit was observed on the surface of the iris or the anterior lens capsule.

While the boy is the youngest patient to receive the treatment, he is not the first to experience the bizarre side effect. 

A 2021 study reports the case of a 20-year-old man in India who endured the exact eye color change.

He received favipiravir, and on the second day, he noticed discoloration of his eyes – the same deep blue that returned to natural brown when treatment had stopped.

‘We assumed that the bluish corneal hue could be related to favipiravir and advised the patient to stop using favipiravir immediately. It was remarkable to note that the very next day, upon stopping favipiravir the patient’s corneas returned to normal color,’ reads the paper published by a team from Medicine Healthway Hospitals in India.

Following this case, the team sifted through the literature to find other instances but determined this man is the first case of favipiravir causing bluish discoloration of the corneas.

 

When Lucy Letby‘s friends circulated a post on social media inviting people to tag each other as characters from a spoof Mr Men and Little Miss series, they were quick to name her ‘The Innocent One’.

None could have predicted the terrible irony of that post when, years later their ‘studious’ and ‘goofy’ friend was put on trial and found guilty of the most heinous crimes in modern times. 

Letby was described as ‘vanilla’ by police because on the surface the NHS nurse seemed entirely innocuous – a plain, single woman going out to salsa sessions with her friends and returning to a suburban semi twinkling with coloured lights where she kept Disney-style cuddly toys on her bed and slept beneath a duvet bearing the similarly childlike motif ‘Sweet Dreams’. 

The duvet wasn’t her only childlike foible. In the minutes after her first arrest her father, John, carefully rearranged her collection of cuddly toys on the bed: Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, a rabbit and a light brown teddy bear. 

When she was asked in court to name her two cats, the killer momentarily hesitated, then almost sobbed their names. ‘Tigger and Smudge’, she said, wiping away a tear.

Letby has now been exposed as one of Britain’s worst ever serial killers. Each and every day she set off for work as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital she did so wanting to inflict unimaginable pain on the very infants she was supposed to be caring for in intensive care.

The fact that Letby was deemed ‘innocent’ and the least likely of her peers to get into trouble, perhaps speaks volumes about her ‘girl-next-door’ persona.

Social media pictures show her enjoying holidays to Ibiza and nights out with friends, while after work she would return to a childlike home with Disney stuffed toys on her bed.  

But how did this ‘vanilla’ or ‘beige’ girl, with an unremarkable upbringing, in an ordinary English town, go on to become a ‘monster’ and the most prolific child killer in modern UK history?

Born the only child of retail boss John, 77, and his accounts clerk wife, Susan, 63, on January 4 1990, Letby was raised in a 1930’s semi-detached home, in a cul-de-sac, in the cathedral city of Hereford, on the England Wales border. 

A source told the Mail that Letby’s mother was distraught when her daughter was arrested – wailing and crying, even telling police: ‘I did it, take me instead,’ in a desperate bid to protect her. 

She attended the local state comprehensive, Aylestone High School, where friends said she had designs on becoming a nurse from early on.

‘She was part of a group of girls, many of whom were interested in a career in nursing,’ one said. ‘I remember going to a careers day with Lucy and some of the others where jobs in the health and social care sector were being bandied around.’

Described as straight-laced, Letby attended the evangelical Hope City Church and had a close circle of ‘churchy’ friends – five girls who self-styled themselves the ‘Miss-Matches’ while studying for their A-levels at Hereford Sixth Form College.

Their social media pages are full of pictures of the clique larking around in the sunshine outside Hereford Cathedral and enjoying a final holiday to Greece together, before they all flew the nest and went off to universities around the country.

One former friend told the Mail: ‘It was a massive shock when Lucy was arrested. When I knocked about with her in school, there were no red flags about her character. She seemed very normal, very straight.’

The mother of another close pal said: ‘She was a happy girl. Part of a close-knit group. There were no boyfriends, well not that I knew of anyway.’

Letby worked hard, combining her studies with a part-time job at WH Smith in the city, and her parents were immensely proud when she became the first in their family to go to university. 

She began her paediatric nursing degree course at Chester University, another cathedral city not dissimilar to her hometown, in September 2008.

It was unlikely to have been her first experience of medicine, however. At the age of 11, she was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid, a condition which can cause tiredness, weight gain and depression in sufferers.

Untreated it can also impair fertility and lead to problems in pregnancy. It is also likely to have brought her into contact with the medical profession for the first time, involving frequent visits to the GP and specialists. Later she also developed optic neuritis, a condition caused by inflammation of the optic nerve which can cause pain and blurred vision.

During the trial she revealed the thyroid medication sometimes made her grumpy, texting one friend ‘everyone peeing me off.’

Moving away from home and her parents was a big deal. Mr and Mrs Letby doted on their daughter, who was born five months after they married, in July 1989. 

Creatures of habit, they still live in the house they bought shortly before their wedding, and holiday in Torquay three times a year, taking their daughter with them right up until she was arrested in July 2018 – just hours after the trio returned from their annual break in Devon.

Neighbours remember Letby as a ‘sweet’ girl, who was a ‘delight’ for her parents. They were so proud when she attained her honours degree they marked her graduation, in December 2011, with an announcement in their local paper, the Hereford Times.

Alongside a picture of the pretty blonde, wearing a mortarboard and clutching her degree certificate, they wrote: ‘Letby Lucy BSc Hons in Child Nursing. We are so proud of you after all your hard work. Love Mum and Dad.’

A similar announcement, with an accompanying photograph of Letby as a young child was also placed in the same newspaper to mark her 21st birthday.

But texts Letby exchanged with colleagues hinted she sometimes felt smothered by her mother and father and guilty about moving away. She explained they missed her and hated her living alone. 

She appeared to speak or text them every day and described them as ‘suffocating at times.’ She told one doctor friend who was considering moving to New Zealand that she could never do that as it would ‘completely devastate’ them.

‘Find it hard enough being away from me now and it’s only 100miles,’ she said.

In a message to another friend, she wrote: ‘My parents worry massively about everything & anything, hate that I live alone etc. I feel bad because I know it’s really hard for them especially as I’m an only child, and they mean well, just a little suffocating at times and constantly feel guilty.’

The couple relocated to Manchester and attended every day of their daughter’s trial, with Mrs Letby sometimes breaking into tears and appearing anxious during breaks when her daughter was undergoing particularly tough periods of questioning by the prosecution. Investigators suspect Letby had told them scant detail of the horrific nature of the crimes she was being accused of before it was laid out in front of them in court.

At university, Letby was ‘part of the quiet bunch’ although she obviously enjoyed the freedom living away from home afforded. While her social media posts showed her enjoying cocktails with friends on nights out, larking around a lap dancing pole and pulling funny faces for the camera, her contemporaries remembered a ‘geeky and slightly awkward’ student, who was focused on her dream of becoming a nurse.

‘She was very bright,’ one said. ‘She was really sweet, kind and friendly and always part of the quiet bunch.

‘I was so shocked when she was arrested. She loved her job, and when she and her friends were in uni they all worked so hard and were all driven and excited.’

It was during her three-year degree studies, in 2010, that Letby first spent time on the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital and afterwards decided to specialise in caring for premature babies, taking up a post full-time in the hospital’s neonatal unit soon after she qualified.

Letby – or nurse 11I0094E – appeared to do well in her ‘dream job,’ which she said, ‘was everything.’ So much so that, 18 months after qualifying, in March 2013, she was trusted by managers to be interviewed for a local newspaper as the poster girl for the neonatal unit’s £3m fundraising campaign. Pictured holding a tiny sleep suit in support of the Babygrow appeal, she said: ‘My role involves caring for a wide range of babies requiring various levels of support.

‘Some are here for a few days, others for many months and I enjoy seeing them progress and supporting their families.’

And there’s no question most of her colleagues believed she was a ‘dedicated’ nurse. Few suspected the self-confessed ‘career driven’ Letby of having a hand in the deaths and collapses of babies – even after doctors became suspicious and she was removed from frontline duties.

Mary Griffith, a nurse for 43 years before retiring in 2016, said Letby was ‘knowledgeable, caring and thorough’ during the time she worked alongside her. Shift leader Chris Booth also described her as a ‘conscientious, excellent and hardworking’ member of staff.

She was also friendly with the babies’ parents, making cards for them on Mother’s and Father’s Days, helping them bathe their newborns and even messaging them on Facebook to see how their children were doing once when they went home.

One, whose son was cared for by Letby, said: ‘I met her a few times, she was completely normal. I never would have thought in a million years that she could have done something like this. She was not the chattiest nurse there, quite reserved, but I would never have suspected her.’

Another mother, whose son was in the unit for seven weeks, said: ‘I remember her very well and I could not have asked for a more caring and helpful nurse. She helped me give my son his first bath. All I can say is my experience is that she was a great nurse.

‘I talked to her loads of times and she was really, really lovely.’

But unbeknown to her managers or colleagues, by the time of smiling Letby’s second appearance in the hospital newsletter, in a story announcing they had hit the halfway mark in the fundraising drive, in August 2015, her killing spree had already begun.

And for months and months she got away with it. While some doctors had their suspicions, hospital executives did not want to ‘think the unthinkable’ – so the medics were fobbed off and Letby grew in confidence.

Single, and living in nurses’ accommodation on site, managers knew they could ask her to work extra shifts, often at short notice. She made no secret that, having recently qualified to look after the sickest babies, she preferred working in intensive care and resented younger, less experienced nurses when they were assigned infants more poorly than ones she had to look after.

One nurse, who shared a flat with her in hospital accommodation, said Letby did not appear like a ‘monster.’

‘As I said to the police, she was absolutely fine to live with,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe she had done what she has done.

‘She was quiet, but she wasn’t a loner. She was out all the time.

‘I had very little contact with her. She was either at work, out, or in her room. We’d say hi, bye, have a little conversation, like you would with a flatmate and that was it really. Nothing out of the ordinary.

‘Everybody thinks I’m going to say she was some kind of monster, but she wasn’t. It was a bit of a shock when she was arrested.’

But this ability to be kind and pull the wool over the eyes of her colleagues helped Letby carry out her murderous campaign ‘in plain sight,’ police said.

Describing Letby as ‘beige or vanilla,’ Detective Chief Constable Nicola Evans, the deputy senior investigating officer with Cheshire police, said: ‘She abused the trust of the people around her, not just the parents, but also the nurses she worked with and regarded as friends.

‘There isn’t anything outstanding or outrageous about her. She was a normal, 20-something-year-old. She had a normal job, she was average in that job, she had a group of friends and a family and a social life, nothing that you wouldn’t expect from someone of her age at that time.

‘The fact she was non-descript and average in work allowed her to go under the radar and to commit these offences. There wasn’t anything outrageous about her, there wasn’t anything that stood out about her, she was beige or vanilla. She was present but not featured.’

By March 2016, Letby had been working at the hospital for more than four years. She had bought her first home, a £180,000 modern semi, in the suburb of Blacon, two miles from the Countess, which she described as a ‘huge’ milestone. Pictures of the house, with its child-like décor, ornaments and neatly manicured garden, with climbing roses, prompted her to break into tears when they were shown during the trial.

Her bedroom had teddy bears, including Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore, on the bed, fairy-lights hanging from the bedstead and two framed prints of feel-good slogans such as ‘Shine bright like a diamond’ and ‘Leave sparkles wherever you go’ on the walls. Figurines of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves could be seen on a windowsill and thankyou notes from her godchildren, which proclaimed her ‘number 1 godmother’ were pinned to her kitchen noticeboard.

She lived alone with her two cats, Tigger and Smudge, and didn’t appear to have a regular boyfriend, although the court heard she was obsessed with a married doctor.

His arrival at court prompted more tears when he apparently betrayed her friendship and gave evidence for the prosecution against her.

Letby denied their relationship was intimate and insisted she simply loved him as a friend. But she admitted he visited her home outside work hours, and the pair met for coffee, meals and walks when not on duty. They also exchanged hundreds of messages on Facebook messenger, including scores of messages ‘of a social nature’ that were never shown to the jury and were often exchanged over long periods of time, into the small hours. She also doodled pictures of love hearts and repeatedly wrote his name on notes found at her home which talked about how she ‘loved’ him.

Even after she was removed from the unit Letby and the medic remained close, arranging at least one trip to London together, although she insisted they never stayed overnight.

Investigators believe that – by the end of her killing spree – Letby was so desperate to see him that she harmed and murdered babies to get him crash bleeped to the neonatal unit when she knew he was on duty and working elsewhere in the hospital.

On one occasion it was also claimed she murdered a tiny, ten -week premature baby boy because she was angry that one of her friends she was texting did not understand why she was upset at being given a break from working in intensive care following the death of another baby.

Criminologist Professor David Wilson told the Mail that this desperation to be acknowledged at work were signs of a ‘hero complex,’ and narcissism in Letby’s personality. Placing herself at the centre of a crisis was also indicative of the mental condition, Munchausen’s, he said.

‘She sees herself as deserving of attention and with skills that are superior to other people,’ he said. ‘She sees herself as a saviour – she has unique skills no other person can possess.

‘But she is quite unusual to other health care and nurse serial killers, who are often seen as odd by their peers, because she did have friends and people she socialised with.

‘The other thing is she is creating a crisis around her, which is a form of Munchausen’s. Extraordinary stories are being told about what happens when she is on shift. She’s saying, ‘look at all the things that occur when I’m around.’ It’s also a ruse to get the doctor that she fancies there.’

But, in the end, she became too cocky. The unexplained deaths of two identical triplets within 24 hours of each other on consecutive shifts, at the end June 2016, was the ‘tipping point’ and doctors demanded she be moved off the unit and into an administrative role.

Letby was furious and two months later put in a formal grievance against her bosses.

But it was another nine months before the hospital called in police and during that time Letby continued to live her life as normal – ironically working in the Risk and Patient Safety office on the hospital site, socialising with her former colleagues on the unit and university friends, going to parties, and out drinking to bars and the races.

Even after she was arrested and bailed to her parents’ home, in Hereford, and with the distressing allegations relayed in the pages of national newspapers, Letby appeared completely oblivious to the enormity of what she was facing, attending yoga classes at the private Holmer Park Spa and Health Club on the edge of the city.

One member said: ‘Other people in the class got to know what she was accused of because they had read it in the news and talked about it among themselves, but you would never have known what was going on from her demeanour.’

Letby told the jury she went through a very difficult time after she was moved off the unit and developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her arrest. She claimed it left her with hypervigilance and hypersensitivity – making her sensitive to loud noises and distractions. In a highly unusual move, the judge agreed she did not have to walk from the dock to the witness box to give her evidence because of these problems and instead no one was allowed into the courtroom until she had already been seated.

Professor Wilson said this behaviour too was a feature of her manipulative personality, as she attempted to exert her control over the justice process.

‘Like all serial killers, she has a need for power and control,’ Professor Wilson said. ‘Taking the life of another and deciding who should live or die is the ultimate power and control. We see that in her courtroom behaviour as well, in her having to be seated before anyone else comes in.

‘She’s a very complex character and in terms of other health care serial killers she is an outlier. She is not odd or incompetent, like they often are, because she has friends and was capable in her job. She was a killer in plain sight.’

She told colleagues she found it ‘boring’ looking after infants that simply needed help feeding and time to grow and would ‘migrate’ to the higher dependency rooms when she got the chance. On at least one occasion she also argued with a shift leader when she was assigned the more stable newborns to look after.

She was also unfazed about ruffling feathers. Eirian Powell, the hospital’s neo-natal manager, spoke of how Letby was prepared to call out anyone who made a mistake, whether they were a nursery nurse or a consultant. She would regularly put in formal ‘Datix’ incident reports if she thought mistakes had been made or patient care compromised.

A hospital source told the Mail: ‘She was not that well liked. She had an air of arrogance and could be a bit of a madam.’

Despite this, Letby was not disliked by other staff and had some friends on the unit,

AFL star Jamie Cripps and his model wife Liv welcome miracle baby – following devastating cancer diagnosis

By Caleb Taylor For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 09:21 EDT, 17 August 2023 | Updated: 09:21 EDT, 17 August 2023

Births in England and Wales fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2022, official figures show.

Around 600,000 live births were logged between the two nations last year — 3.1 per cent fewer than 2021.

The figure has been in freefall for a decade, apart from a blip during 2021 put down to a mini baby ‘bounce’ by couples who put their family plans on hold at the start of the Covid pandemic.

Experts believe the trend is partly down to women focusing on their education and careers and couples waiting to have children until later in life.

The UK’s fragile economy and cost-of-living crisis is also putting people off having children, some believe, evidenced by abortion rates simultaneously spiking. 

Experts claim people’s financial situations are increasingly playing into decisions around whether to start a family.

Others cite the environment, with people fearing that they will worsen their carbon footprint by having a child or that their child will have a bleak future due to climate change.  

Other reasons floated for plummeting birth rates include better access to contraception and lower child mortality.

There is no evidence that Covid vaccines are to blame, with scientists insisting there is no proof they harm fertility.

The ONS data shows that there were 605,479 live births between the two nations in 2022 — 577,046 in England and 28,296 in Wales.

This marked the lowest number since 2002 and was 20,000 fewer than 2021.

The drop is in line with pre-pandemic trends, which experts also fear will continue. 

Almost half of adults in the UK say they are not planning to have children, separate data revealed last year. Many cited financial reasons.

Experts fear the declining birth rate will leave Britain with an ageing population, pile extra pressure on the NHS and social care and hamper economic growth.

James Tucker, the ONS’ head of health analysis, said: ‘The annual number of births in England and Wales continues its recent decline, with 2022 recording the lowest number of live births seen for two decades.’ 

Fewer than half of new mothers (48.6 per cent) were married or in a civil partnership when they gave birth in 2022 — the lowest number on record.

Single mothers overtook those in couples for the first time ever last year. 

The rate peaked at 96 per cent in the early 1900s, before falling to 80 per cent in 1985, 70 per cent in 1991 and 60 per cent in 2001. 

It comes amid a trend of couples focusing on their careers and getting married and having children later in life.

Figures show that more older women than ever are becoming mothers. Some 31,228 over-40s gave birth in 2022 — up from 30,542 in 2021 and 17,336 in 2002.

But despite the number of older mothers soaring in recent decades, doctors tend to warn women not to leave it too late to have children. 

Fertility drops with age and the risk of complications, including stillbirths, increases.

Women in their late forties are estimated to have as little as a one in 20 chance of becoming pregnant naturally because they have fewer eggs, which are less capable of being fertilised.

Demand for donor eggs, one of the most common methods for older women to have a baby, have soared in recent years.

Other options include IVF — when a woman’s eggs are collected and mixed with sperm in a lab before being returned to the womb — and intrauterine insemination, when sperm is directly inserted into a woman’s womb.  

While births fell across the board among women in their twenties and thirties, teen births increased for the first time in nearly two decades.

Some 14,755 became mothers in 2022, up 7.4 per cent in a year.  

However, the figure is in line with pre-pandemic levels. A record low of 13,738 births among teens was logged in 2021, which experts think was down to Covid curbs stifling the young from hooking up. 

Meanwhile, there were 2,433 stillbirths in 2022 — when a baby is born after 24 weeks but did not breathe or show signs of life. 

The figure is down by 164 (6.3 per cent) from 2021. It means there was four stillbirths per 1,000 births — down from 4.1 in 2021 but higher than the 3.9 logged in 2019.

Rates were highest in the North East and West Midlands (4.3 per 1,000) and lowest in the South West (2.9 per 1,000). 

Advances in neonatal care, a decline in smoking rates among pregnant women — one of the leading causes of a stillbirth — and a greater focus on identifying at-risk babies has been credited for reducing the rate from 41.4 per 1,000 in the 1930s.

The Government in England has plans to halve the 2010 stillbirth rate by 2025, meaning the figure would need to drop to 2.6 per 1,000 births three years from now.

It comes as separate ONS figures published today show that three in 10 newborns in England and Wales in 2022 had non-UK-born mothers — nearly twice as many as two decades ago.

Among these 183,309 babies, mothers were most likely to be from India, while fathers were most commonly from Pakistan.

The moment a Ukrainian experimental kamikaze drone hit Vladimir Putin‘s £3 billion bridge linking Russia to Crimea and triggered a huge explosion has been revealed for the first time.

Ukrainian secret service agency SBU today shared a video of the audacious attack by the ‘Sea Baby’ drone which saw huge explosions rip through the 12-mile crossing last month. 

The footage, seen by CNN, shows the naval kamikaze drone armed with up to 850kg of explosives sailing towards the bridge under the cover of darkness before it smashed into the crossing, sending debris flying through the air.

Separate footage footage released by the SBU and Ukrainian sources showed the scale of the explosion from other angles as the strike hit the crossing which has separate road and rail links.

It marks the first time the SBU has openly claimed responsibility for the attack that was conducted by the Ukrainian navy. 

The new footage appears to show that Russian defences failed to detect two drones, reported Agenstvo.

One is seen approaching the road crossing, and a second apparently exploded on the rail section as a train was crossing. There is known to be less damage to the rail part of the bridge.

The new ‘Sea Baby’ drone has been in development for months and SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk warned Moscow of more attacks to come. Ukraine today released footage of the naval drone for the first time.

The deadly unmanned boat was loaded with up to 850kg of explosives when it detonated.

The Ukrainian-designed marine drone – reportedly constructed without Western help – was also used to strike two Russian vessels – the assault ship Olengorskiy Gornyak and tanker SIG, putting both out of commission.

‘We are working on a number of new interesting operations, including in the Black Sea waters. I promise you, it’ll be exciting, especially for our enemies,’ Maliuk told CNN.

‘Sea surface drones are a unique invention of the Security Service of Ukraine.’

He explained: ‘Using these drones we have recently conducted a successful hit of the Crimean bridge, the big assault ship Olengorskiy Gornyak and SIG tanker.’

Both of these vessels were struck in a drone attack this month, causing major gashes in their sides and are now out of commission.

A couple were killed and their 14-year-old daughter was seriously injured following the blasts on the Crimean bridge, which is a major supply line for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine and a prestige project that was personally opened by Putin. 

A section of the crossing was destroyed in the double strike, with pictures showing twisted metal barriers, debris and a damaged car in a major blow to Moscow’s war effort.

Drivers were seen in dash cam footage braking sharply after the explosions destroyed parts of the crossing and sent debris flying towards them.  

Speaking of the attack on the bridge, Maliuk said: ‘At the final stage of the preparation we could not even think about sleep or food… We were fully concentrated on the operation.

‘The final last days were quite nervous. When the explosion happened, we were so happy and started congratulating one another.

‘This was a very emotional moment for all of us and our victory, which will definitely come soon.’

Maliuk insisted that Ukraine’s Western partners are not involved in Kyiv’s attacks on the Russian-built bridge opened by Putin in 2018, or warships. 

It comes after the Kremlin blamed Britain and the US for orchestrating the drone strike on the bridge – without providing any evidence to support their outlandish claims.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack with the involvement of Britain and the US. 

Maliuk said the bridge linking Russia to Crimea was a ‘legitimate’ target for Ukraine. 

The SBU chief also claimed responsibility for an earlier strike on the bridge on 8 October last year involving a truck, but declined to give details.

The strike on the Crimean bridge left Russian politicians furious, with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev saying Putin should ‘blow up’ the homes of Ukrainians in response to the drone strike.

A ranting Medvedev said at the time: ‘The world and our own experience shows that it is impossible to fight terrorists with international sanctions, intimidation or exhortations.

‘They only understand the language of power. Only personal and completely inhumane methods.

‘Therefore, it is necessary to blow up their own houses and the houses of their relatives.

‘Look for and eliminate their accomplices, abandoning the insipid idea of a trial against them.

‘But the main thing is to destroy the top leadership of terrorist formations, in whatever cracks these insects hide. It’s difficult but possible.’

Were it not for becoming pregnant, Jennifer Came, 28, might still not know the reason for the agonising period pain she experienced for more than a decade.  

Even though her periods caused her ‘such pain I’d just cry’ since she was a teenager, ‘I had just accepted it as my lot,’ says Jennifer, a marketing executive from South London. 

Then, three years ago, Jennifer had an ectopic pregnancy, where an embryo implants outside of the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube, where it cannot survive. After emergency surgery to remove it (in rare cases it can be dangerous for the woman if not treated in time, because the fallopian tube can rupture), it was discovered that Jennifer also had endometriosis. 

The condition means tissue similar to the cells that make up the womb lining grow elsewhere in the body, often causing extreme pain (this occurs as the tissue breaks down every month, just as the lining of the womb does; but the blood has no way of leaving the body, causing inflammation). As many as 10 per cent — possibly more — of premenopausal women have endometriosis, according to charity Endometriosis UK. 

While Jennifer is relieved to finally know the reason for years of pain, the diagnosis is tainted with the knowledge that the condition has affected her fertility, reducing her chances of conceiving naturally. And it put her at increased risk of the ectopic pregnancy in the first place. 

‘The average time to diagnosis in the UK is a shocking eight years,’ says Emma Cox, CEO of Endometriosis UK. ‘So to have the disease but no diagnosis during this time means severe pain may be normalised or dismissed by doctors. Without a diagnosis, treatment cannot be accessed and, without treatment, the disease may spread.’ 

She points to a study in Denmark in 2022, suggesting 79 per cent of women with endometriosis don’t have a diagnosis: meaning millions of women in the UK have the condition but are By JULIE COOK not being diagnosed — it is currently reported as 1.5million, but many more could be affected, this study suggests. 

And, according to Professor Ertan Saridogan, a consultant in reproductive medicine and minimal access surgery at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, ‘in some women it can go undiagnosed for many years until something like an ectopic pregnancy happens’. 

Jennifer’s periods were normal to begin with, ‘but when I turned 16 they became incredibly painful — now it’s like someone standing in your uterus with a sword’. 

The pain meant she often had to miss lessons and once, during her final exams, had to run out. 

‘The headmistress followed me and was so worried,’ she says. ‘I was doubled over on the loo screaming in pain.’ Over the years, Jennifer’s mother took her to the doctor. She recalls: ‘We tried the Pill but it gave me migraines, so it was back to painful periods.’ 

After finishing university and starting work, ‘my periods became erratic — sometimes not coming for six weeks or more — but whenever they did they were excruciatingly painful’, she says. 

Then, in autumn 2019, Jennifer was in a work meeting when she suddenly felt very unwell. ‘I was clammy, couldn’t see straight and had a pain in the left side of my stomach that was worse than any period pain,’ she says. ‘I had to go home. I lived near Charing Cross Hospital at the time so I staggered in and they took me into A&E.’ 

There, doctors took a urine sample: when the results came back, the nurse told Jennifer that she was pregnant. ‘It was such a shock,’ Jennifer recalls. 

‘I was in my mid-20s and focused on my career. Although I definitely want children I had not planned a baby just then. But then the nurse said that this level of pain indicated something was not right.’ 

Jennifer was transferred to Acton Hospital for more specialist treatment: scans showed it was an ectopic pregnancy. ‘The baby had implanted and was growing in my fallopian tube,’ says Jennifer. 

Around one in 90 pregnancies in the UK is ectopic. Often the reason for an ectopic pregnancy is never determined. However, women with endometriosis are 2.7 times more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy compared with those without endometriosis, says Emma Cox — although the overall risk is still small. 

It’s not known why endometriosis increases the risk — possible causes include inflammation, changes to the lining of the uterus, or endometriosis affecting the fallopian tubes. 

Jennifer underwent laparoscopic surgery that day to remove the pregnancy and her left fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancies often result in the loss of the fallopian tube. ‘I was very upset to lose the baby, but relieved the pain had gone,’ she says. 

Then Jennifer was told the surgery had revealed deep-infiltrating endometriosis — meaning it had moved beyond the womb and was growing deep within surrounding organs and tissue. ‘I was shocked but also suddenly it all made sense — all the pain over the years. How had I never guessed?’ And how had the doctors missed it? 

Professor Saridogan says that endometriosis pain ‘can vary in the body depending on where it grows — in rare cases even near the lung’. It can cause period pain, painful bowel motions, pain during sex ‘or even pain all the time’, he adds. 

(Heavy bleeding is common, affecting around a third of women with endometriosis, he says, but it’s possible to have endometriosis without unusually heavy periods.) 

‘In teenagers painful periods are common so, in general, when we see a teenager with painful periods doctors do not always consider endometriosis. Instead, it’s thought more than likely these painful periods will settle in time. 

‘But it is not normal to have very painful periods. Yet sometimes it goes uninvestigated.’ 

The only way to diagnose — or rule out — endometriosis for certain is via keyhole surgery, as the lesions of extra tissue don’t always show up on a scan. ‘Scans may be normal, but they don’t rule out endometriosis,’ says Professor Saridogan. 

Yet Jennifer had never been sent for a scan — or any further investigations for her period pain. 

Emma Cox says: ‘If you’re experiencing chronic pelvic pain or period pain that’s interfering with your day-to-day life, it’s not normal and it’s best to see a doctor. Keeping a pain and symptoms diary can help show your doctor what you’re experiencing, such as if there are any cyclical symptoms each month. Ask if your GP practice has a doctor who specialises in women’s health.’ 

After the ectopic pregnancy, Jennifer had an IUD coil fitted and has not had a period for three years. ‘It’s wonderful living without period pain,’ she says. (The IUD coil is an established treatment for endometriosis and works by releasing progesterone into the womb and pelvis which stop periods.) 

Even so, the delay in diagnosis has come at a cost, as both endometriosis itself and a previous ectopic pregnancy can affect future fertility. While an estimated 60- 70 per cent of women with endometriosis will conceive naturally, it is also a common condition among those seeking fertility treatment.

Once a woman has had one ectopic pregnancy, she has an increased risk of it happe­ning again. And losing a fallopian tube makes it harder to conceive (although it’s estimated that 65 per cent of women will get pregnant again within 18 months after an ectopic pregnancy). 

That said, ‘women who’ve had an ectopic and have endometriosis are more likely to have difficulties getting pregnant, as well as a higher risk of another ectopic pregnancy in the other fallopian tube,’ says Professor Saridogan. 

Doctors have advised Jennifer to try for a baby sooner rather than later, but she says it’s not what she wants at the moment. ‘They did say I’d be eligible for IVF when the time comes, though,’ she says. 

She recently ran the ASICS London 10k and will be running the London Landmarks Half Marathon in 2024 for Endometriosis UK and is telling her story to warn other women. She is still amazed no doctor ever suggested this could be the cause of her pain. 

‘We’re told as women to put up with period pain, but unbearable pain is not the norm. I was never offered a scan that might have shown my endometriosis. Now I have less chance of conceiving naturally and having a successful pregnancy.’ 

endometriosis-uk.org