The woman told police she did not know she was pregnant before giving birth and had been “really scared”.
She told social workers she hid her daughter because she did not want the father, who she claimed was abusive, to find out about her.
For the next three years the child was kept apart from her father and siblings, whom the court was told had been well looked after but were taken away from the mother after the discovery.
The secret toddler was fed milky Weetabix through a syringe, kept inside at all times and denied treatment for a cleft palate.
Sion ap Mihangel, prosecuting, told the court: “She was kept in a drawer in the bedroom, not taken outside, not socialised, [and had] no interaction with anybody else.”
Ap Mihangel said the infant was left alone while her mother took her other children to school, went to work, and even when she stayed with relatives over Christmas.
When interviewed by police, the mother said her toddler was not kept in the drawer under the bed all of the time and the drawer was never closed, but admitted the child was “not part of the family”.
The court was told when the mother’s new boyfriend began to stay at the property overnight, the child was moved into another room and left there alone.
But her secret was eventually uncovered one morning when the man, who also cannot be named, returned to the house to use the lavatory after she had left.
Upon hearing a noise, he entered one of the bedrooms, saw the child and left the home.
He alerted family members, and later that day a social worker visited and found the child in the drawer of the bed.
In a statement read to the court, the social worker said she saw the child sitting in the drawer and asked the mother if that was where she kept her daughter.
“She replied matter-of-factly, ‘Yes, in the drawer’,” the social worker said. “I was shocked the mother did not show any emotion and appeared blase about the situation.
“It became an overwhelming horror – that I was probably the only other face [the child] had seen apart from her mother’s.”
Examined in hospital, the baby, who has now been placed in foster care, was found to be significantly malnourished and dehydrated.
Matthew Dunford, defending, said there had been an “exceptional set of circumstances” in the case, including the woman’s mental health, volatile relationship with the father of the child and the Covid lockdown.
The woman pleaded guilty in October to four counts of child cruelty, reflecting her failure to seek basic medical care for the child, abandonment, malnourishment and general neglect.
Sentencing her on Tuesday, Honorary Recorder of Chester Judge Steven Everett said: “To my mind, what you did totally defies belief.”
“You starved that little girl of any love, any proper affection, any proper attention, any interaction with others, a proper diet, much-needed medical attention.”
He added: “You attempted to control this situation as carefully as you could, but by sheer chance your terrible secret was discovered.
“The consequences for [the child] were nothing short of catastrophic – physically, psychologically and socially.”
He said the child was an “intelligent little girl who is now perhaps slowly coming to life from what was almost a living death in that room”.
