HOUSTON (AP) — A psychiatrist who treated Andrea Yates years before she was charged with drowning her children said she warned her patient against having any more babies because it might cause her to become psychotic.

Dr. Eileen Starbranch, who began testifying Tuesday for the defense in Yates' capital murder trial, retook the stand Wednesday to say she never spoke with the doctor who treated Yates just before the drownings.

On Tuesday, Starbranch said she remembered Yates being "warm and loving" with her four sons when she was in Starbranch's care for about five months following two suicide attempts in 1999. But she warned Russell and Andrea Yates against having more children to avoid future psychosis. The couple later had a daughter.

Yates, 37, is on trial on two murder charges for three of the five drowning deaths. She has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

To prove insanity, defense lawyers must show the Houston woman suffered from a severe mental disease and didn't know right from wrong at the time of the drownings in June 2001.

Yates is charged in the deaths of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Charges eventually could be filed in the deaths of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.

Starbranch was questioned by prosecutors Wednesday morning about her contact with Saeed.

"I've never spoken with Dr. Saeed," Starbranch testified. "I wouldn't know Dr. Saeed if he was sitting in this courtroom now."

Starbranch said she had gone through her office records before coming to court and found no messages from Saeed or any requests for Yates' medical records.

Prosecutor Joe Owmby then produced a fax cover sheet sent May 9, 2001, with a handwritten note from Starbranch's assistant to Saeed.

"Here are the medical records on Andrea Yates," the cover sheet on the 20-page fax said. "Thanks for your (patience)."

Starbranch said she didn't know how to work a fax machine and couldn't confirm that the fax had been sent.

"I've been known to fax things upside down," Starbranch said.

Later Wednesday, Russell Yates was expected to take the stand on his wife's behalf, as were her brother and mother.

On Tuesday, Starbranch said the extent of Andrea Yates' mental illness was worrisome.

"If left to her own devices, she wouldn't have physically survived because she wasn't taking care of herself," Starbranch said.

"She would rank up there with the five sickest patients I've ever seen," added the psychiatrist, who has been in practice since 1975 and seen thousands of patients.

A little more than a year after Starbranch last saw Andrea Yates on Jan. 12, 2000, the psychiatrist said she received a call from Russell Yates saying his wife was sick again after giving birth to a fifth child.

Starbranch said she made a note that Andrea Yates needed to be admitted as soon as possible, but Yates never arrived.

The psychiatrist said she later learned that Yates had been admitted to a treatment center closer to the family's home. Starbranch told jurors she never was contacted by doctors at the facility where Andrea Yates was taken.

Dr. George Ringholz, who also testified for the defense Tuesday, told jurors Andrea Yates met the legal definition of insanity when she drowned her five children in the family's bathtub.

"Mrs. Yates was severely ill and in the course of an acute psychotic episode," Ringholz said in his second day on the witness stand. "She did not know the actions she took on that day were wrong."

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Joe Owmby, Ringholz acknowledged his work in the case was his first criminal insanity evaluation.