Cops: Mom put feces in tot's IV

AUSTIN (KXAN) - An Austin woman is charged with injury to a child after a hospital-surveillance video caught her putting feces into her 3-year-old child's Central Ventricular line cap.

Emily McDonald, 23, of Manor "admitted she knew her actions would result in her daughter's prolonged illness," said Lt. Jeff Hampton of the Austin Police Department's Child Abuse Unit.

The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by life in prison.

Dell Children's Hospital admitted the little girl on April 15 with high fever and a long history of chronic diarrhea. During her stay, the hospital staff became suspicious of McDonald.

The little girl was being treated for serious infections caused by unusual organisms which can be found in feces, and the hospital was unsure how she was getting these infections during her hospital stay. So staff decided to place a surveillance camera inside the child's room.

The hospital watched the surveillance video and found McDonald putting fecal matter on her finger from the child's diaper and rubbing it on the inside of her child's feeding tube. These types of actions are life-threatening to the child, as they could cause sepsis.

After seeing the video, hospital staff called the child abuse unit of the Austin Police Department and alerted them of the situation. When the police arrived, McDonald confessed to manipulating her daughter's feeding tube by wiping the end of it with feces.

McDonald admitted to doing this five times during her daughter's stay at the hospital, police said.

"The Seton Family of Hospitals has many security and safety procedures in place to protect our patients," said John Hellerstedt, MD, the vice president of medical affairs. "If we suspect possible injury to one of our patients, we take legal and necessary steps to protect their health and safety."

Meanwhile, McDonald was keeping a blog and YouTube diary of the ordeal - which included therapy, surgeries, and, according to McDonald's writings, great stress to herself and the rest of the family.

The little girl had spent much of her young life in and out of the hospital - according to the blog and earlier writings right after she was born.

Both the blog and YouTube channel were made private this afternoon and are no longer available to the public.

"The last few days have been frustrating," McDonald, the mother of three, wrote on May 27, the last entry available to the public on TheMcDonaldFive blog. "It's one thing to spend 8mos (sic) in the NICU after your child's born but it's 10x worse having to revert back to that lifestyle after having your child home for 2.5yrs."

McDonald had many videos of her children on YouTube:

McDonald was originally granted a personal recognizance bond by one judge. However, when Judge Kocurek found out about the case, she was "distressed". She revoked the personal recognizance and added a bond of $100,000 instead.  Now she has a monitoring bracelet on her ankle and has been ordered not to see any of her three children.

That's despite the fact that Wednesday detectives said they believe McDonald was only a danger to her three year old daughter. Austin District Judge Charlie Baird released McDonald Tuesday on her own recognizance, despite an initial bond set at $100,000.

Judge Baird said he believed his ruling was justified because McDonald has no criminal record. McDonald's case was then assigned to Judge Julie Kocurek. She ordered McDonald to be rearrested Wednesday afternoon.

McDonald has since bonded out of jail and was given an electronic ankle monitor. She is not allowed to see her three children. Her other six and four-year old children are staying with McDonald's husband.

Police said McDonald has never been diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy syndrome, a form of child abuse when a caregiver deliberately makes a child ill. But, they did mention "one reason she offered to us as an explanation is that it would keep her daughter sick to gain attention," said Detective Marcy Graham.

If the charges are true, then McDonald was perpetrating a cycle of sickness that she was already aware of right after the girl's premature birth a few years ago.

In a 2007 article, she said she was told that her daughter may not survive past birth.

"From the moment she was delivered life has been tough for her," she wrote. "While being wheeled into the operating room I will never forget the obstetrician asking if my husband and I were sure we wanted [her daughter] to be resuscitated. The next words out of her mouth were, 'you know she's probably not going to make it.'"