Rachael’s son ‘sensed her death’
AS FRIENDS and family gathered around dying Rachael Bland in the early hours of September 5 last year, her little boy Freddie lay sleeping peacefully in the room next door.
But something surprising happened when she took her final breath. Normally a sound sleeper, Freddie, aged three, suddenly woke up and let out a series of small cries before falling back to sleep.
“It was amazing. He never wakes up or cries out normally,” her grieving husband Steve told The Times Magazine.
BBC radio presenter Rachael, originally from Creigiau, Carfdiff, died from breast cancer after undergoing two years of gruelling treatment. Sadly, it spread to her skin, liver and lungs, with the broadcaster discovering she had just “days” left to live at the end of August.
Heartbreakingly, Steve reveals they had just started trying for a second baby when she discovered a lump the size of a walnut in her breast.
What’s more, they underwent a successful cycle of IVF and had been hoping to conceive once she was given the allclear.
Steve said: “At 7.30am on Boxing Day, 2016, they collected six or seven eggs and she started chemotherapy two days later. “Somewhere in a lab in Manchester there are four healthy embryos. “We were really, really happy. It was just brilliant. We thought there would be no reason why we wouldn’t go on to have more kids, or at least one more.” Sadly, her cancer was more serious than anyone at first realised. However, Steve refuses to describe their ordeal as a “tragedy”, insisting: “I have always tried to be grateful for what I have and not too much for things that I don’t have or couldn’t have.
“That’s why I would never consider myself unlucky or unfortunate.”
Rachael admitted she was scared that Freddie wouldn’t remember her, and so before her death wrote a book for him titled For Freddie.
In it she once again apologised for leaving him as an only child.
“I would have loved to have had three children altogether. And I’m so sorry, Fred, that I wasn’t able to give you a sibling,” she wrote.
“I’m so glad you have your three cousins living just around the corner.
“I hope they will fill the gap left by those babies we dreamed of having but that never sparked into life in the way that you, my beautiful Fred, did.” ■ For Freddie: A Mother’s Final Gift To Her Son will be on sale from February 21, with a portion of the proceeds going to Breast Cancer Now.
We thought there would be no reason why we wouldn’t go on to have more kids .... Rachael Bland’s husband Steve