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Born to die



When it comes to my children, I've always believed I know them better than anybody else. Yet with my daughter Jade, eight, I'd not always been so sure. Compared to her siblings, Christopher, 18, and Chantelle, 15, Jade always seemed a little different...
When she was born, she'd been a tiny 4lb. She'd needed a feeding tube at six weeks because she wasn't taking enough milk.
‘She's such a pale, skinny little thing,' I'd worried to her dad Mark, 36.
‘The doctors say she's just small for her age,' he'd reassured me.
After lots of tests, they'd not really come up with much. They just concluded Jade had a ‘failure to thrive'.
That niggle of doubt had always remained, though. As she'd grown up, I'd noticed Jade's face always looked a bit older than her body. She was really short too, with a squeaky voice.
I'd taken her back to the doctors time and time again, but nobody had an answer.
In the end, after eight years of arguing with doctors since she was born, I just came to the conclusion she was different and always would be.


Read the rest of Bernie's heartbreaking story in the new issue...



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