Our Recurring Nightmare

Her Little Boy Had Just Beaten Cancer. But Fate Wasn't Finished With Marie-anne Cornelius, 30, From Hastings...

- Tracy Gayton, Bess Browning

Grinning, I unlocked the bathroom door and yelled for my partner Dave, 51.

‘What is it, love?’ he asked.

Then he glanced at the pregnancy test clutched in my shaking hand.

‘We’re having a baby!’ I squealed.

I’d met Dave at a nightclub where he was a bouncer, back when I was 19.

Despite the 30-year age gap, we’d fallen for each other hard.

Two years on we were living together, and now expecting our first baby.

I already had a 3-year-old daughter Rosie, who Dave had taken under his wing.

We were all so excited about the baby’s arrival.

On 22 August 2009, our son Buddy-Lee arrived.

And it wasn’t long before we started thinking about having another.

On 28 November 2012, our second son Denny-Rea was born.

We enjoyed every moment of family life.

Little Denny was such an extrovert, showing off his singing and dancing skills.

The centre of attention! But during Christmas 2015, Dave and I noticed he wasn’t his usual bubbly self.

Sniffly, crying a lot, he’d lost that cracking smile everyone commented on.

And then we started to notice the bruises.

Tiny little blue marks all over his body.

‘Maybe the kids have been play fighting?’ Dave suggested.

Our boys did like a bit of rough-and-tumble.

But mother’s instinct told me that there was more to it.

Lately, Denny wanted to be carried everywhere.

And a few days later, as I was lifting his legs to change his nappy, he let out an agonised scream.

‘Mummy, it hurts!’ he wailed, clutching his ankle.

Worried, I took him to the doctor’s.

My GP said it was just growing pains.

But I wasn’t convinced. By now, I was pregnant once again. And in January 2016, while Dave looked after the kids, I went to Conquest Hospital in Hastings for the scan.