A new mother who throttled her baby daughter to death with a pair of knickers within minutes of giving birth in her bathroom has been spared jail.
Gintare Suminaite, 30, killed her child, the product of a secret affair with a fellow Lithuanian, at the bedsit she shared with her boyfriend on April 5 last year.
Prosecutor Ed Brown QC told how Suminaite kept her pregnancy hidden from authorities and her long-term partner, with whom she already had a young child.
When confronted by her boyfriend, she denied sleeping with 32-year-old Arturas Vencius.
Suminaite planned to run away to Lithuania with her lover, but he went back alone and she stayed in England as she did not want to be separated from her child.
On April 5, gave birth in the bathroom at home, with her partner in another room.
He found her lying naked in the bathroom surrounded by blood and a baby bath full of what appeared to be clothes.
Suminaite was bleeding and pale and her boyfriend eventually called an ambulance after she confessed what had happened, saying she had done 'something bad' and was going to jail.
The child lay undiscovered as medics initially did not spot the body in the baby bath and the couple did not mention it.
She was treated in hospital for significant blood loss and injury from childbirth, the court heard.
Ambulance staff and police returned to the flat and were 'deeply shocked' at finding the child hidden in wet towels with a ligature tied tightly around her neck, Mr Brown said.
Following her arrest, Suminaite said she strangled her baby but did not know why.
She described giving birth quickly and easily and said the baby was moving and trying to cry.
She said she wrapped her hands around the child's neck for a few minutes and strangled her 'as hard as I could at the time' before holding her in the shower in an attempt to drown her.
She cut the umbilical cord with a razor then passed out in the bath, she said.
Suminaite was sentenced at the Old Bailey to a 24-month community order with a rehabilitation requirement order.
Mailonline