Aristocrat Constance Marten is giving evidence at the Old Bailey trial over the death of her newborn baby with partner Mark Gordon.
The 36-year-old testified on Thursday that she gave her daughter Victoria “the best that any mother would”, as she and Gordon deny charges of gross negligence manslaughter of the child between 4 January and 27 February last year.
Prosecutors allege that the couple’s “reckless and utterly selfish” behaviour led to the infant’s “entirely avoidable” death, after they spent weeks living “off-grid” in a tent on the South Downs.
The court heard Marten concealed her pregnancy and went on the run with Gordon after their four other children were taken into care. Victoria’s remains were found last March in a Lidl shopping bag in a disused shed.
Marten told jurors she was in “disbelief and shock” after she awoke to find the lifeless child tucked inside her jacket, before feeling “intense grief”.
The couple also deny charges of perverting the course of justice by concealing the body, along with concealing the birth of a child, child cruelty, and allowing the death of a child.