Family members are upset a mother who suffocated her 15-month-old daughter before dumping her body and claiming she had been abducted was spared extra jail time..

Sofina Nikat has been sentenced to a community corrections order and will walk away from the court after already serving 529 days detention.

She has been out on bail after pleading guilty to infanticide in September, when she admitted to smothering baby Sanaya to death at Heidelberg West.

Sanaya's paternal family said Nikat's sentence was unfair.

Sofina Nikat has been sentenced to a community corrections order.

Sanaya was 15-months-old when she was murdered.

"We have had no justice for her death," Zahraa Sahib told reporters outside court.

"I don't think it's very fair that we've lost our little girl and there's nothing for her."

Ms Sahib said the sentence was "really disappointing and upsetting for our family".

Prosecutors had pushed for a jail term, but at a pre-sentence hearing in September her lawyers argued a non-custodial community corrections order was appropriate given Nikat's mental state.

Victorian Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry on Thursday said he accepted evidence from a psychiatrist that Nikat was depressed when she suffocated Sanaya and threw her body into Darebin Creek.

"Since I accept the (psychiatric) conclusions, I will sentence you on that basis," he said.

Nikat was originally charged with murder but this was downgraded because of her depressive disorder.

Sameer Sahib, Sanaya's father, was rocked by his daughter's death.

The 24-year-old was captured on CCTV walking the toddler in her pram to parkland along Darebin Creek on the morning of April 9 last year.

She played with Sanaya for a while before covering her mouth until she couldn't breathe anymore. Nikat sat holding the child's lifeless body in her arms before leaving her at the edge of the creek.

The young mother returned home and reported Sanaya had been abducted by an African man who smelled of alcohol.

Nikat walks her daughter to the creek where she smothered her. (Supplied)

Nikat smothered her baby and threw her in a Melbourne creek.

Police conducted a full scale search for the little girl until the next day, when a family discovered her body in the creek.

The court previously heard Nikat claims she was told by a Fijian Imam that Sanaya was possessed and needed her spirit cleansed.

Nikat had been struggling with the unsettled baby and was heard saying to her daughter "why do you have to be born? Why do you have to make my life so miserable?"

The killer's lawyers submitted Nikat was suffering from depression and a disturbed state of mind following the birth of Sanaya.

Nikat and Sanaya had been living in women's refuges in the months before the killing.

She had separated from the child's father after an arranged marriage.

Sameer Sahib told the judge, "My life will never be the same... I lost my daughter in such a horrific way"

"I imagine her in the back seat of my car, if she was with me she would be safe."

Nikat and Sanaya had been living in women's refuges in the months before the killing.