A couple whose baby daughter suffocated during her first breast feed are now suing the NHS for millions, claiming they were let down by a midwife.

Julia Geis-Clements, 39, and her financier husband, Lee Clements, 41, from Denham, say a midwife gave inadequate advice on how to breastfeed their daughter, Cerys.

She would have escaped a lifetime of disability had the midwife warned them to keep her airway clear as she was held against her mother’s breast, their lawyers claim.

Cerys collapsed less than half an hour after her July 2012 delivery at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, the High Court heard.

Although Mrs Geis-Clements had attended ante-natal classes, Cerys was her first baby and the “exhausted” mum had no experience of feeding an infant.

And the couple claim the midwife should, as promised, have returned to check on Cerys 10 minutes into the feed.

Had she warned them to keep one of Cerys’ nostrils free so that she could breathe, tragedy would have been averted, they say.

Twenty five minutes into the feed, her husband rushed off to find the midwife who could not feel a pulse.

“In fact Cerys had suffered an episode of hypoxia which had caused her severe brain damage,” said Mr Moon.

The court heard Cerys is now stricken by cerebral palsy, epilepsy and visual impairment, and has “significant neuro-developmental problems”, needing 24-hour care.

Mrs Geis-Clements is suing Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust on Cerys’ behalf.

The midwife says she advised Mrs Geis-Clements she should support the infant’s back and neck during feeding, but not to hold her too tightly and not to hold the back of her head.

She had no recollection of Mrs Geis-Clements “specifically asking her about the possibility of her baby not being able to breathe during feeding”, said John Whitting QC, for the NHS trust.

But she would have explained the risks of holding the back of a baby’s head during feeding and that a child will not suffocate on the breast so long as it can move its head back, said Mr Whitting.

Mrs Geis-Clements, he added, had been an “assiduous” attender at pre-birth NCT classes, at which “safe breast feeding practice would have been covered in some detail”, and the cause of Cerys’ oxygen starvation was probably a “random post-natal sudden collapse” which could not have been foreseen and in which negligence played no part.

The hearing continues.