I am the proud mother of 3 angel babies, and I want to keep their memories alive and share their special but brief lives with all. My name is Diane Thom and I'm 24 years old and live in Scotland. 

When I fell pregnant I was surprised as it was unplanned, but I loved the idea of having a little person growing inside of me. I sailed through the pregnancy until 24 weeks when at a routine antenatal check up my blood pressure was very high. It was high enough to have the midwife send me to the hospital. When I got there I had lots of checks and my blood pressure had gone up again, so I was kept overnight.

I was in the hospital for the remainder of my pregnancy for a total of about 8 weeks. I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. It was then they decided to induce me. I was given a growth scan and the baby was measuring small. My due date was the 24th of September 2000 and I was induced on the 22nd of September. I didn't give birth until Sunday. I gave birth to a beautiful 5lbs 8oz baby boy who had black hair with misty blue eyes and a cute little button nose. When he was born he was placed in my arms and I noticed he wasn’t breathing properly. His eyes were opening and closing and he was struggling to breathe. I called the midwife and they rushed him away.

It seemed like a lifetime. I did not think for one minute that my baby would actually die.
Half an hour passed and a woman came in to the room and told us that he was very sick and that they would be transferring us to a hospital better equipped to handle his problems. They brought him to me on a ventilator to let me see him before we were transferred and his tiny body looked even smaller in the incubator. He had needles and tubes sticking out from everywhere and a big tube down his throat.

For the first time that morning I realised that my little boy had a fight on his hands to survive. The machine went off and they rushed him away to be resuscitated again. An eternity seemed to have passed and 51 minutes later three people came in to the room and closed the door. The obstetrician spoke with tears in her eyes as she explained that my baby had died. I felt my whole world just crumble around me. No words can ever describe what it is like to hear those words.

We named him Malcolm after his daddy and Thomas after my dad. Six weeks after Malcolm died we got the PM results and they confirmed he had died from a condition known as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and a congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

My 2nd pregnancy was very brief as my due date was to be the 8th of January 2002, but I only made it to12 weeks. I went for my ultrasound and was told that there was no heartbeat and that my baby was dead. I was given two choices as to whether to have an operation to remove the baby or miscarry naturally. I chose the latter convinced they'd made a mistake. I was asked to phone the hospital within a week if it hadn't happened naturally.

I had to walk out of the room with expectant mums sitting in the room waiting to see a little live baby on the screen and receive the news that I had so wanted to hear. I went home and just sank in to despair. I knew I was carrying my dead baby inside me. I started to bleed a few days later. I couldn’t take it anymore and eventually agreed to go for the operation because I was just causing myself more pain. I don't have an ultrasound photo of this baby as I wasn't given one and I was in so much shock that I never thought to ask for one.

I discovered I was pregnant on the 23rd of November 2003. I was anxious and couldn't relax the whole way through. I had 3 miscarriage scares in the beginning and had my 1st scan at 12 weeks. I was so relieved to see a live baby on the screen this time and glad that I'd at least gotten by the milestone that I hadn't the last time.

I was scheduled for an anomaly scan at 20 weeks just as a precautionary because of everything that had happened with my previous pregnancies. They actually didn’t expect anything to be wrong. The day of my detailed scan I was so nervous and I had a gut feeling that something was wrong. I hadn't been able to relax through the whole pregnancy and the week before my baby had just started kicking. The sonographer scanned me for an hour because she had to go from head to toe checking my baby's heart and lungs and that everything was where it should be because of the conditions my first son.

She eventually went to get the doctor telling us she needed a second opinion. She left us in the room with my baby's frozen image on the screen. I looked at the perfect little image on the screen I knew it was bad news. The doctor came in and she scanned me for 30 minutes. The whole time they were mumbling between themselves. My baby wouldn't stay still long enough to give them a clear picture as he was kicking and sucking his thumb. The little scamp just refused to stay still, but eventually she switched the scanner off. She handed me a few photos and gave us a slip to go to another hospital in 2 days time. She told us that she thought there was something wrong with the baby's heart.

We left the hospital once again shattered. I gave up hope. Two days later we went to Simpson’s Hospital were at least four different people greeted us as we went in to a little room. I wondered why there was four and then realised they must be med students. I was scanned for an hour and a half and that scan and every subsequent one I had afterwards throughout the rest of my pregnancy were taped all for their research purposes because I was a ''rare case''.

After the hour and a half she switched of the machine gave us some pictures and handed me some tissues. I already knew what was coming. She explained that my baby had the same conditions as my first son and that it was very severe. My baby's heart was on the wrong side of his body and was displaced to the right because of the diahpragmatic hernia. There was only one ventricle pumping blood from the heart to the lungs.

She explained that my baby would almost certainly die either during the pregnancy or very soon after. She asked us if we would like to continue the pregnancy or to terminate. I was 20 weeks pregnant and my baby had just started kicking and the choice I was faced with was difficult, but I knew that there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to keep my baby and give him the best chance of survival I could.

I continued with the pregnancy and it was heartbreaking knowing that my little baby was going to die. It was an incredibly hard thing to face. My doctor back at St. John’s was extremely supportive and arranged for a pediatric cardiologist to meet with us and discuss if there was an operation that could be done to try and save my baby. He travelled from Dundee and we met with him and he once again scanned me. By this time my baby was much bigger and stronger.

He now had a little personality in the womb sucking his thumb, turning somersaults and would jump and kick constantly whenever I was being scanned.

The pediatric cardiologist concluded that there was no operation that could be done. We left the hospital once again with the last glimmer of hope shattered. I had to attend the hospital 3 times a week for the rest of the pregnancy as once again I was having problems with my blood pressure and they wanted to monitor the pregnancy more carefully in case my baby died.

It was incredibly hard to believe that they were just going to stand by and let my son die. There was talk of possibly putting a morphine drip on the back of his hand so he would not suffer and to help him drift off if he held on for too long. I was horrified because it just made the situation so real and brought home that my baby was really going to die. The hospital referred me for reflexology to bring my blood pressure down a bit and calm my nerves. I had it every week for the last 5 weeks of my pregnancy.

My labour was long and I didn't give birth until the 1st of August 2004 (5 days exactly overdue) weighing in at an ample 8lbs. He lived for 3 minutes and he passed away in my arms. He went so peacefully and I was so glad that he'd slipped away quickly instead of hanging on. It would have been insufferable and unbearable. We named Joshua Lewis. My hubby stayed with me in the hospital while all our family visited to say goodbye to our precious son. He was beautiful and he had lots of dark curly hair with the same misty blue eyes and trademark button nose as his brother. He was so perfect.

I thank you for taking the time to read about my precious babies. We've since found out that it’s a rare genetic condition and I can't have any more kids because they have given us a 1 in 2 chance of it happening again and the risk is just too high. We are trying in our way to accept and deal with the fact that we cannot have children. It is heartbreaking after all that we have endured and suffered, but we are survivors.

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