Brave mum

Just how does a mum, or a mum-to-be decide what is best when faced with a terrible case such as this?

 

At 6 months pregnant, 32 year old Sarah Brook was told by doctors that her terrible backache and nausea was in fact bowl cancer, which was being worsened by pregnancy hormones and needed immediate treatment. Doctors said her pregnancy hormones were accelerating the growth of the tumour and that she could postpone chemotherapy for only two weeks before she became too ill. This meant she gave birth to her little angel, Polly, by c-section at just 27 weeks. Weighing just 2lbs, her ‘little fighter’ as Sarah describes her, is growing stronger, and is now 4 weeks old, although she still has many months ahead of her in the neo-natal intensive care unit. Sarah sees her daughter Polly as a little miracle, and says: ‘I knew that having a baby would be a life-changing event but even I couldn’t contemplate quite how much. The feeling when I first saw her was just complete love.’

 

Sadly for Sarah, who has now started treatment, the cancer has spread to her intestines, pancreas, neck and lungs and she has been told it is incurable. Both Sarah and her husband now have to adjust to the reality that he may need to think about life without his wife, and being a single dad to Polly. And Sarah has to face an unknown future, having made the decision to hold off treatment in order for her little girl to get the best start possible, she may now never see her grow up. She says, ‘I just want to be a mother to my baby girl and continue to be a wife and best friend to my husband for as long as possible.’

 

Having to be a brave mum is not easy and it's difficult to figure out what is the right thing to do. There are no winners in this scenario either - Sarah will never see her daughter grow up and Polly will never know her mum. What would you do?  I'm not sure that this is even what I'd call a choice.  I'm ashamed to say that the selfish part of me is saying, save yourself - the baby isn't born and therefore I don't know what I'm losing.  But my maternal side, on seeing these photos, is calling me a selfish cow for even thinking, let alone writing that down.  How could you not save your little lovely baby?

 

This is such a sad story and I really hope that Polly is told often and frequently about her mum and how amazing and brave she was to save her little life.

 

I'm humbled by this story because Sarah has given her child the gift of life in a way that I can only imagine - I wish only good things for her and her little family and my prayers are with her every day.