Laura

I was diagnosed with breast cancer on April Fool's Day 2016. I was five months pregnant with my second child at the time and had a two-year-old son at home. There wasn't really time to wallow, although I do remember spending hours that day lying on my bed, crying. I was worried that I'd be told I had to terminate the pregnancy. We knew she was a girl by then; we'd started to think about names. When I was 27 weeks pregnant, I had a lumpectomy.

I was told there was a small chance that the anaesthetic would send me into labour, so when I came round, my only concern was that I wasn't having my baby. More bad news followed. While still pregnant, I was told that I have the BRCA2 gene mutation, which seriously elevates the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. 

When I was 35 weeks pregnant, I was induced and my daughter was born. In the hour following her birth, she began to have breathing difficulties and was taken to special care. Later that day, she was taken by ambulance from Leicester to Sheffield for intensive care, and she stayed there for eleven days with my husband at her side. Meanwhile, one week after her delivery, I started chemotherapy. My baby girl made a full recovery and was home with us within a couple of weeks, but my chemotherapy continued for the first few months of her life. Once it was done, I had my ovaries removed and had a double mastectomy to reduce my chances of going through it all again.