Nicole Blain was jailed for a minimum of 19 years after being handed a life sentence for the murder of her 19-day-old daughter, Thea Wilson, in Greenock.

Lord Scott told the court Blain's account of what happened was a patently absurd version of events and said she had carried out catastrophic deadly violence on the baby. As he sentenced her at the High Court, cries of “monster” rang out from the public gallery while Blain was led away to begin her sentence.

Blain, 30, was found guilty by a jury in April of killing Thea, who died after suffering injuries that suggested blunt force trauma or that she had been shaken. The child had three skull fractures, brain damage and bleeding behind the eyes, injuries that were consistent with her being violently shaken and repeatedly hit off a hard floor, wall or furniture.

The court heard Blain had claimed she woke from a nap on 14 July 2023 to find her daughter lying injured on the floor of her Greenock flat. She told police the newborn had been dropped by another child in the flat, an explanation the judge dismissed as a feeble attempt to evade responsibility for her crimes.

The sentencing came after a trial that heard Blain had struggled with post-natal depression after Thea's birth. A social worker visited her on the morning of the baby's death and said Thea was in her crib, and Blain had been due to take her daughter later that day to visit her paternal grandmother, Laura Wilson, in Ayrshire.

Blain called Laura Wilson's mobile phone early in the afternoon, and Alan Wilson told the court he heard a child screaming in the background when he answered. “I had never heard anything like it. It was piercing and extremely loud,” he said.

In court, Lord Scott said: “Despite what you have continued to say, what happened was no accident. It could not have been caused by a fall or being dropped. Despite persistent attempts to suggest it, what was done was not by another child, but by you, the main person responsible for the care of baby Thea. Rather than love, protect and nurture her, what Thea received from you was catastrophic deadly violence. What the jury decided beyond reasonable doubt was that, in an act that was intentional or wickedly reckless, you murdered a tiny defenceless baby.”

The case has left the details of a child's final hours fixed around a single, brutal finding: the court did not believe Blain's version, and it said the injuries to Thea could only be explained by violence inflicted by her mother.