A 27-year-old mother in Iowa will spend a decade behind bars for abusing her 2-year-old son, unnecessarily injecting him with insulin in an apparent effort to make the toddler appear sick.

Sixth Judicial District Judge Mike Harris on Friday ordered Alexandra Marie Frost to serve 10 years in a state correctional facility for the abuse inflicted on her son, court records show.

Frost in June pleaded guilty to one count of felony child endangerment resulting in serious bodily injury and one count of felony administering harmful substances. Harris subsequently handed down the maximum sentence of 5 years for each charge, with the sentences to be served consecutively.

The investigation into Frost began when she brought her son to the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital on March 13, 2023, Cedar Rapids CBS and Fox affiliate KGAN reported. The child was reportedly suffering from multiple medical issues, including low blood sugar and “very high” insulin levels, and was admitted to the facility.

During the boy’s five-day stay at the hospital, doctors reportedly told authorities that his glucose levels repeatedly dropped and then stabilized.

Doctors said the drops in the boy’s glucose levels “appeared to be anomalies.” This led the medical staff to suspect that the toddler was a victim of medical child abuse, The Gazette reported. Insulin injections lower an individual’s glucose levels and can lead to serious medical conditions, including death, doctors told authorities.

One day after the victim was admitted to the hospital, a surveillance camera was reportedly activated in his room, where Frost was the only person staying with her son on a regular basis. Footage from the camera showed Frost returning from the bathroom holding what appeared to be a syringe, which she injected into the top of the toddler’s foot before disposing of the needle in the “sharps” container.

According to the report, the footage showed that after being injected, the toddler began crying and screaming from the pain of the injection.

The hospital staff notified the police and a responding officer took pictures of the toddler’s foot where his mother appeared to have injected him with the syringe. The spot of the injection had not been bandaged and was on the top of the toddler’s foot, per the Gazette. The boy’s nurse confirmed that she did not give the victim an injection and that if she had, it would have been administered on the bottom of the foot and would have been bandaged.

When the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services removed the boy from Frost’s care, authorities said the medical issues disappeared.