A disgraced Sydney naturopath who put a breastfeeding mother on a liquid-only diet that nearly starved her eight-month-old baby to death has vowed to never work with children again.

Marilyn Pauline Bodnar last August pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in failing to provide for the boy in 2015.

At the 61-year-old’s sentencing hearing in the New South Wales district court on Thursday, Bodnar’s defence team said the woman deeply regretted giving the wrong advice.

Her lawyer Rick Mitry said the Leppington-based practitioner had been paraded in front of the media by police during her July 2015 arrest and had since been “trolled and bullied on social media”.

“She feels crushed, she has been punished,” he said.

In May 2015 the child was admitted to Westmead hospital near death with severe malnourishment and developmental issues.

He weighed just 6.5kg, was emaciated and severely dehydrated, had sunken eyes, dangerously low sodium levels and flexed hands and feet.

The mother had sought health treatment advice from Bodnar about her son’s eczema and was told to stop conventional medical and dermatological treatments, the court previously heard.

The former nurse recommended a raw food diet and eventually water only for the woman, who was exclusively breastfeeding the infant.

At one point Bodnar modified the water-only rule by adding watermelon for three days.

The crown prosecutor Tony McCarthy said Bodnar had ignored the boy’s weight-loss warning signs owing to a “blind allegiance” to her alternative medicine ideology.

“This blind allegiance was the cause of the child nearly dying,” he said.

He argued for a custodial sentence, noting Bodnar’s “high degree of recklessness”, the baby’s extreme vulnerability and the fact he was days away from death when admitted to hospital.

The maximum penalty is a five-year jail term and Judge Peter Berman is expected to hand down his sentence later on Thursday.

In 2016 the mother, a university-trained midwife at a Sydney hospital, pleaded guilty to failing to provide for her baby and was given a 14-month good behaviour bond after agreeing to give evidence against Bodnar at her trial.

Bodnar had a grievous bodily harm charge dropped last August after her own guilty plea.