MY FIRST AND LAST CUDDLE

Liana Stemp, 40, had to say fitt goodbye to her baby, just weeks after he was born

- JO BELL

My baby's tiny hand gripped my finger as I sang Three Little Birds to him through tears. His beautiful dark M eyes stared up at me, filling me with love. The Bob Marley song had been playing when Brandon was born, and I often found myself singing it to him as I spent hours at his bedside in hospital.

I hadn't had an easy pregnancy with Brandon. It had taken me and my husband, Kevin, 37, four years to decide to try for another baby following the birth of our daughter, Elisia. I'd suffered birth trauma, PTSD and PND after her arrival in 2013.

So, I was nervous but excited when I fell pregnant again in 2018. I'd had epilepsy as a child, which I'd grown out of, but I suffered a seizure late in my pregnancy with Elisia so doctors monitored me this time around.

Everything was fine until the week of my 16-week scan. I was in the car leaving the supermarket car park when everything went black. I wasn't driving fast, but Elisia, then six, was with me, and the car ended up in a bush, with her locked in the back while I had a seizure in the front. I came to in an ambulance that some passersby had called.

Luckily, Elisia was unharmed and I was flooded with relief when a scan showed that the baby was fine too. I’d developed prenatal epilepsy, though, and I was put on medication to try and prevent further seizures.

It was a worry, but Kevin and I were delighted at the scan that week when we discovered we were having a boy. But our joy was wiped out by the concerned look on the sonographer’s face. ‘It looks like his stomach is sitting a little higher than it should be,’ she explained.

She referred us to Worthing Hospital, where I was due to give birth, and they called us the following morning.