A 38-year-old French woman admitted in court Monday that she had killed six of her children immediately after their birth, wrapped them in plastic bags and then hid them in her cellar, French media reported.

Celine Lesage told the court that she was afraid of the reaction to the infants of her former partner, who is the father of her 13-year-old son. If convicted of the killings, she could be sentenced to life in prison.

Her former partner, a 39-year-old plumber, found the six corpses after being drawn to the cellar by a strange odour. He had fathered the last of the dead babies. The other five infants were produced in a relationship with another man.

The children died between 1999 and September 2007.