My Last Year With My Kids

Alix Manders, 36, should have been enjoying her pregnancy. Instead she began the greatest fight of her life…

- Deborah Riseley & Sarah Holmes

Snuggled on the sofa, listening to my son, Kian, seven, read aloud, I fight back the tears.

It’s these ordinary family moments that always get to me. Watching Kian and his brother Lucas, five, having fun in soft play, pushing my youngest, Finley, two, on the swing as he shrieks his raucous toddler laugh. It sounds like I’m being overemotional. But the truth is I’m living with a death sentence and every moment, every single second with my boys is precious.

It all started in November 2014. I was 22 weeks gone with Finley and at first I’d put my constant exhaustion down to being pregnant and working long shifts in my job as a critical care nurse. It had been a stressful few months too. My partner and I had separated around the time I fell pregnant. We’d been together for 10 years, but the relationship had been falling apart for a while and a baby wasn’t going to fix that.

But I was starting to feel something might not be right with the pregnancy. ‘Your bump’s enormous,’ my mum, Shirley, pointed out. ‘You look 40 weeks gone already. That baby must be huge.’ I’d started getting an odd pain under my left rib too.

Concerned, I went to the GP, who booked me in for an emergency scan, which revealed a mass on my left ovary so large it was pushing on my rib. 

‘It’s probably just a cyst,’ the obstetrician reassured me. ‘But it’ growing so fast, you will need surgery to remove it.’ There was a risk I’d miscarry but the operation couldn’t be delayed. ‘Is the baby OK?’ I asked a nurse, as soon as I came round from the operation. As she nodded I felt a flood of relief.