The police are set to liaise with the Crown Prosecution Service to see whether there is any criminal case to answer over the death of a journalist’s baby.

A narrative verdict was expected to be recorded today following an inquest which heard how journalist Emma Kerns had carried the body of her newborn baby in a bag to hospital after denying she was pregnant.

Yesterday the coroner heard extracts from a diary written by the former Ilkeston Advertiser reporter, which she accepted she had written but said she could not remember doing so.

One extract read: “Please, please help me. I’m scared but trying to block this all out… Why can’t it go away? Why can’t it just go to sleep and leave me alone?”

Coroner Donald Coutts-Wood asked the 25-year-old whether this was about her being pregnant.

She replied: “I don’t know. It’s likely but I don’t remember doing it.”

At an earlier hearing the inquest heard how Emma refused to admit her pregnancy throughout, instead telling friends and family she had put on weight after over-indulging at Christmas. She gave birth alone at her flat in Sheffield in March 2006.

She told police the baby girl, whom she named Sian, had made gurgling noises shortly after birth. Emma fell asleep and when she woke up the baby was turning cold and had stopped breathing.

Yesterday the coroner asked Emma a series of questions about the birth, having warned her that her answers might incriminate her.

When asked if the child was still alive when she left to go to hospital she declined to answer.

She also would not say what she had done with the placenta, which the coroner said was a crucial missing link in the inquiry.