A coroner is investigating how a newborn baby came to be found dead inside a Coles shopping bag in Melbourne’s South East.
The baby’s body was found in the backyard of a home in Clyde North in May last year, the Coroners Court in Melbourne heard on Thursday 13 October.
Police have not laid charges over the incident. The infant’s mother, who lived in a neighbouring home, has denied being pregnant or giving birth to the baby.
Forensic examinations found the infant was aged between 37 and 38 weeks’ gestation at death, the court heard.
Coroner Katherine Lorenz said the evidence before her showed the baby may have been born alive.
The mother took laxatives and other over-the-counter medication after she began experiencing abdominal pains in the days before 28 May 2021, counsel assisting the coroner said.
She spoke to a GP the following day, over the phone, but denied she was pregnant.
She told police she began experiencing increase abdominal pressure on 30 May, and she went to the toilet where she passed blood.
Her partner gave her a Coles plastic shopping bag, where the woman claimed she placed soiled clothing and slippers and then took a bath. The woman said she washed some of the clothing in the shower and left the slippers inside the bag.
She reported feeling weak and lying down after her bath, before she cleaned the toilet area and disposed of the Coles bag in a garbage bin. She couldn’t recall how she disposed of the bag or which bin she placed it in.
The woman’s housemate came home and urged her to go to hospital. Upon arrival at the emergency department, she was found to be fully dilated and appeared to have delivered a baby.
Medical staff said she was surprised and denied any knowledge of pregnancy symptoms, or having given birth to a baby. Police searched her Clyde North property later that evening, but no baby was found.
Her neighbours found a Coles shopping bag in their backyard with a dead baby inside, about 11.30am on 31 May 2021.
An inquest into the matter has been listed to begin on 5 June, 2023.
