Grieving Parents Tell Our Baby's Gift From Heaven

Alice was devastated when her baby boy passed away. But then her angel sent her a special present.

- Harriet Bullough

Alice Dix was over the moon when she fell pregnant with a baby boy.

The 22-year-old and her partner Liam had been trying for a child for a year and thought all their dreams had come true.

But then tragedy struck.

Alice went into premature labour at 33 weeks and baby Ralph was born seriously ill, weighing just 1.8kg.

‘I willed our little boy to hang on but the doctors couldn’t stop my labour,’ Alice tells New Idea.

‘Ralph arrived seven weeks early, on April 10, and to me he was perfect.’

But then the tiny little boy was diagnosed with meningitis and he faced a fight for his life.

‘I was heartbroken,’ says Alice. ‘We’d yearned for our baby for so long, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him now.

‘I desperately clung to the hope that he’d pull through but I had to accept the odds were stacked against us.’ That’s when devastated Alice had an idea.