A woman who gave birth at home to twins before beating one of them to death and stuffing the other stillborn baby into a laundry basket has been jailed for a year.
The mother, identified only as 23-year-old Serbian Jelica S., told a court in Lucerne, Switzerland, that she panicked after going into labour two months early having split up with the babies' father after he pressured her to get an abortion.
Jelica explained how she was at the home she shared with her mother and sister in December 2015 when contractions started, and she jumped into the bath and began looking up advice online.
She said: 'I did not know how a child is born. I filled the bathtub when it started. I do not remember today how I did it.
'I just remember lying in the bathtub and looking on the internet for what to do.'
Jelica delivered the first baby herself but told the court: 'I was scared because he (the baby) did not scream properly.'
Blick reports that Jelica's mother was home at the time, but incredibly did not hear the birth taking place.
Stuffing the silent infant under her clothes, Jelica went and got the basement key from her mother before going downstairs and hitting the child against the wall.
She then threw him to the ground, causing him to suffer multiple skull fractures and a traumatic brain injury.
Jelica then wrapped the baby inside an old Mickey Mouse T-shirt before hiding him inside a giant pink teddy bear.
In court, she said: 'I just put him there. I do not know what went on in my head.'
Some 31 hours later she delivered the second baby boy, again in the bath, and explained that he was stillborn.
Jelica wrapped the dead body in a towel and hid it in a laundry basket in the kitchen.
But the female judge sentenced Jelica S. to spend 12 months in prison with an additional 22 months on conditional release.
She said in her verdict that the court 'estimates the factual culpability to the crime to be very high', but on the other hand said it 'subjectively was an emergency situation'.
A court psychiatrist also suggested Jelica suffered from an 'adjustment disorder with prolonged depressive reaction', which may have contributed to her mindset.
