The parents of the first two victims of Lucy Letby said they would never think of the rogue nurse again and that she was “nothing”.

Letby, 33, lethally injected air into the bloodstream of their newborn son during a night shift at the Countess of Chester Hospital in June 2015 and attempted to kill his twin sister by the same method on the following night.

Addressing the absent Letby in a statement, the mother of Child A and Child B said: “You thought that you could enter our lives and turn it upside down, but you will never win. We hope you live a very long life and spend every single day suffering for what you have done.

“Maybe you thought by doing this you would be remembered forever. But I want you to know my family will never think of you again from this day. You are nothing.”

Medics informed them following the twins’ birth that Child A was “very strong and doing well” and Child B “needed a little bit of help” but was also progressing fine, she said.

In her statement, read out at Manchester Crown Court by prosecutor Philip Astbury, she went on: “Never could we have imagined that the most precious things in our lives would have been placed in harm’s way and in the care of a nurse, who is capable of such despicable actions.

“We never got to hold our little boy while he was alive because you took him away. What should have been the happiest time of our lives had become our worst nightmare.

“You had been successful in your quest to cause maximum pain and suffering.”

She said she and her partner were “absolutely traumatised” by Child A’s death but then “riddled with fear” for his sister.

The mother continued: “We are so thankful that we had that fear for (Child B) as it saved her life, not allowing you to fully do the same to her as you did to (Child A).

“After losing (Child A) we made sure that there was always a member of family at her side watching.

“However, we made a mistake. We started to believe that what happened to (Child A) was a tragic event that we couldn’t have stopped.

“We trusted that (Child B) would be given extra special care, it had certainly appeared that way. Little did we know that you were waiting for us to leave so you could attack the one thing that gave us a reason to keep going on in life.

“We are forever grateful that you wasn’t able to take (Child B) away from us that night. Although our family has a gaping hole where (Child A) should be, there is a constant shining light in (Child B).”