My baby spotted breast cancer and saved my life

A BABY helped his mother to discover she had cancer – when he repeatedly rejected her breast during feeding.

Sarah Boyle, 26, a call centre worker, said Teddy, now one, “screamed” and “became distressed” whenever she tried to feed him from her right breast.

She went to her GP in November 2016 and was referred to hospital where she had a scan and a biopsy.

Two weeks later she was diagnosed with a non-hormonal breast cancer that rarely affects young women.

The first-time mother, who lives with her recruitment consultant husband Steven, 28, in Stafford is now undergoing chemotherapy.

She said: “Teddy could obviously smell and taste that the milk from my right breast tasted different and rejected it. My consultant said he’d never seen anything like it before. He told me it was very fortunate I chose to breastfeed – otherwise my illness may not have been discovered.”

Sarah first noticed a lump in her breast in 2013 but was told that it was a cyst. Over the next four years she had it scanned five times but was told it was hormonal and not malignant.

Five months after Teddy was born, Sarah noticed her breast was smaller and not “working” as well as the other.

Again she was told it was nothing to worry about, but after he rejected her right breast completely she went back to her GP and was referred for tests at Royal Stoke University Hospital.

She said: “One minute I’d been enjoying the new experience of motherhood, the next I was being told that I needed life-saving treatment.

“But I felt so proud of Teddy for bringing the problem to my attention.”