An Italian woman who was given a forced caesarean section and then had her baby taken from her has said she is "suffering like an animal" and cannot understand why her daughter should be placed for adoption in Britain.

The 35-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, reportedly came to Britain last summer, when heavily pregnant, for a training course at Stansted airport in Essex. She had a panic attack connected to a failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition, and was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

The local health trust won a court order for the birth to be carried out by caesarean section, and the baby girl, born in August 2012, was taken into interim care. The mother returned from Italy in February to regain custody of her daughter, telling a judge, Roderick Newton, she had come to terms with her condition and was now sufficiently well.

Earlier this week, Essex county council said the health trust's clinical decision to apply to the high court for permission to deliver her unborn baby by caesarean section was due to "concerns about risks to mother and child".

In an interview with an Italian newspaper the woman said: "I want my daughter back. I'm suffering like an animal."

She said: "They made me have a caesarean without telling me anything. The day of the birth I thought that they were just moving me from one room to another, while I was saying I wanted to go back to Italy. Then I was sedated. And when I woke up she was not with me any longer. They took her from me."

She claimed that two members of the baby's extended family had been "willing to take the little one into foster care" but "[British] social services ignored them".

The mother's Italian lawyer, Stefano Oliva, told the Guardian his client had been well enough to consult over the caesarean section. "The woman … was perfectly cognisant. She was responding to questions," he said. "We are not speaking of a situation in which the baby, the foetus, is at risk. We are not speaking of a situation in which the life of the mother is at risk."

The mother was desperate for her baby to be taken into care by the aunt of her eldest daughter, a Los Angeles resident who has stated she is willing to take in all three girls, Oliva said.

Meanwhile, he said, the baby's mother continued to make progress, had a job, saw her other children and was leading "regular, steady" life. "At the same time it's clear that this situation [with the baby] is making her suffer, suffer greatly. She is a fragile woman who has felt abandoned and is right to have felt abandoned."

Essex council said on Monday it "liaised extensively" with the extended family over the baby's future care, that Italian courts ruled in May the child should stay in England and that it obtained permission from the county court to place her in adoption in October. The mother had two other children which she was unable to care for due to orders by the Italian authorities.

The February judgment at Chelmsford county court when the council was granted a full care order for the baby girl, referred to only as P, and a placement order leading to adoption, was made public on Tuesday on the Judiciary website. On balance, "a permanent, predictable and stable home" for P would be best achieved by adoption, said the judge. However, "It is important for P to know her birth family, as I know they will take a continuing interest in her. It will not be straightforward. It will not be easy."

The judge said P's father, a Senegalese national living in Italy, had, like her mother, opposed her being taken into care. The mother had had mental health problems since 2007 and been admitted to psychiatric hospitals in Italy.

When detained in June last year, she was "profoundly unwell". An "unusual order" at the court of protection in August 2012, gave permission for P's birth to be by caesarian section.

But the mother had been later been "dispatched (indeed escorted) from the UK with undue haste", Newton said. By going to Italy, "any realistic prospect of P returning to her care was diminished substantially".

But when the mother returned to Britain to appear before the court and having complied with her medication, she was clear and articulate.

Sir James Munby, the president of the family division of the high court, who says there must be more transparency over family court decisions, has ordered that the matter be transferred to the high court and any further applications in respect of the child are to be heard by him.