A MOTHER was jailed yesterday for poisoning her baby with potentially lethal amounts of salt.

Rebecca Graham, 20, who admitted cruelty to a child, made her newborn girl ill for at least three months while doctors struggled to discover what was wrong.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that the child -- now nearly two - has since been adopted and is doing well but she was lucky not to have died or suffered brain damage.

Graham and her partner, both of Poplar Street, South Moor, near Stanley, County Durham, took the baby to Durham City's Dryburn Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle at least seven times between September 2000 and January 2001, with vomiting and diarrhoea.

Numerous tests failed to reveal what was causing the illness. Eventually, a chance discovery by a sharp-eyed nurse revealed high levels of salt had been stirred into the baby's feed, prepared by Graham.

John Wilkinson, prosecuting, said: "A nurse accidentally spilt some on her hand, tasted it and noticed it was salt. Analysis of the samples showed the salt content to be 30 times greater than that in a control sample."

Mr Wilkinson said that Graham had at first denied she had poisoned the baby, declaring to detectives that her child "was her world" but later had pleaded guilty.

David Callum, defending, said Graham had accidentally fallen pregnant the first time she had had sex. She had only given her child salt so the baby could remain in hospital where she would be better looked after.

He said Graham had an extremely difficult childhood and that common sense suggested she was suffering from a personality disorder.

Judge Michael Cartilage told Graham he had taken into account her guilty plea, her previous good character and her young age when he sentenced her to 18 months in a young offenders' institution.