Shaken baby's 'muscles gave up and her arms and legs went floppy' Dad says

"No one's done it," he told police in an interview the day he was arrested, February 17, 2021.

After being repeatedly asked to come up with a reason why his baby girl had suffered the long list of injuries she was being treated for, he said she may have a bone density-related medical problem.

"That's all it can be from, because we don't hurt our kids, and no one else has been around our kids," he said.

He told police that his then fiance "wouldn't hurt a fly" either.

"She'd hurt herself before she hurt one of the kids," he said.

The 29-year-old man, who can only be identified as GP, is standing trial in the Newcastle District Court where he has pleaded not guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent on his daughter who was admitted to hospital on December 12, 2020.

Her injuries included a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain, multiple rib fractures - some old, and some new, and damage to her spinal cord.

She had lost movement and sensation in her lower limbs and her bladder was no longer functioning.

The father said that the mother of his baby, and their toddler, would "never, ever hurt kids".

"Makes no f--ken' sense, end of story," he told police in a recorded interview played in court.

But it wasn't the end of the story, police said, because the medical experts' view was that they were inflicted injuries.

When asked if he knew what that meant, he said "it means someone's done it to her."

Police told him the injuries were "consistent with impact force", like being hit, shaken intentionally, or hurt.

"It takes a lot of force to do stuff like this to a kid," police told him.

The baby had been fine the night before, he said, when he put her to bed, and also when he got up to her at 2am.

But when he picked her up out of the cot the next morning, and changed her nappy, that all changed suddenly, he said.

"I went to get another suit, to put another suit on her, and then all of a sudden she gasped for air and started breathing funny," he said during his first interview with police, on Sunday, December 13, 2020.

"I just didn't bother with the suit because she started breathing funny so I, obviously, went back to her and I was holding her hand and tried to talk to her and she was sort of there but not.

"I was trying to talk to her and stuff and she wasn't really there.

"She sort of, like ... rolled over a little bit and stared off. She didn't really look or move around much. Obviously something was up

"So I picked her up and ran down the hallway ... by the time I got (to the bedroom) she was going all limp."

Asked to describe what he meant by 'she went limp' he said she went 'soft and gooey'.

"She was still holding herself together, but she started going all soft and gooey," he said. "Like her muscles gave up and her arms and legs went floppy.

"I was literally picking her up to take her into (her mum) and she was half normal, but was starting to go floppy, and by the time I got to the bedroom she was like a jelly ball."

In the days leading up to that, she had been a little bit sick, vomiting a few times, but showed no signs of being injured or in pain, he said.

"If she had broken ribs she'd be in pain, right? Well I would be. I've had broken bones before and it hurts. She was fine.

"You'd think she'd've been fretting from pain ... if that's what's wrong with her ... because f--k, I would be.

"We honestly don't know what's happened. People think we're all pieces of shit because we come from f--king Cessnock. It's not like we throw her around or shake her. It gets back to 'we're bad people, our kid's bashed."

The trial continues.