Facing heartache each day

Losing a young child is something no parents should ever have to face. For one Shropshire family, it's proving particularly difficult to get over the pain.

December 2, 2007 is a date Glen and Louise Perkins will never forget. It is the day they woke up to find their baby girl "limp and lifeless" in their bed following a restless night because she was teething.

The family, from Coton Mount, Shrewsbury has been left with many questions about why their daughter died after an inquest recorded an open verdict with the pathologist saying the cause of death was "unascertained".

Glen, 47, says Olivia was a perfectly healthy baby and, as experienced parents, they would recognise any signs of distress.

But dealing with the death of Olivia is not the only crisis the family is facing. The couple and their five children – Ryan, 15, Abbie, 13, Sophie, 11, Ellie, four, and eight-month-old Oliver named after Olivia, are squeezed into a three-bedroom house which they claim has a major mould problem.

Glen is desperately hoping Severnside Housing will relocate them, as he and his wife are terrified of the effect the mould could be having on their children.

He says he is even considering calling for Olivia's inquest to be reopened after he researched the mould found in his house – particularly in the bathroom and hall. The house, he says, is also plagued with slugs and Glen is worried her death could have been partly caused by the mould.

"The coroner's report said she had blood on her lungs and I have researched that mould can cause that. It could have been a contribution to it and we are currently considering having it looked at again," he says.

And now Oliver is suffering from breathing difficulties and has been hospitalised twice as well as prescribed antibiotics and a steroid inhaler.

Glen says he lives in fear his son will stop breathing. Oliver sleeps attached to a apnoea monitor to check his breathing.

"When he inhales, it clicks and if he stops breathing for more than 20 seconds, an alarm goes off. The alarm has gone off a few times and it is traumatic. We are trying to wean ourselves away from it," he says.

Since Olivia died, Glen and Louise have not slept in their bedroom.

"There's a great fear factor surrounding that bedroom. At the moment we are sleeping in the living room. We have not even got a bed because I destroyed it after she died, because she died in our bed," he says.

"My wife is currently sleeping in an armchair in the living room and I am sleeping on the couch.

"We listen to Oliver's breathing all the time, and every time we turn over in the night, we listen."

Glen says nothing can explain the conflicting emotions he felt having to deal with Olivia's death and also his wife's pregnancy.

"Losing Olivia is like thinking of the worse thing that has ever happened to you and times that by a million.

"In our case, we had a gorgeous baby girl. She was everything. She was our last child as we weren't going to have any more after her, and it made her so special.

"And when we woke up and found she was dead, we lost everything. We lost our dignity, our pride and the will to live ourselves.

"You do not have any feelings for anything or anyone, sad as it seems, even for the children you all ready have. You are numb and empty," he says.

"Probably until about a week before Oliver was born, I did not want anything to do with him. I did not want to get rid of him, obviously, but the feelings as the pregnancy went along were hoping it was not a girl. We were terrified as we had to have another baby, but we had not got over losing one."

For Glen and Louise, looking after Oliver is like being a parent again for the first time.

"We have a 15-year-old son to a four-year-old girl and now Oliver, and we are afraid of doing something wrong," says Glen, who claims the effect of losing Olivia on the other children has been extreme.

"After Olivia died, every night for three or four nights every 20 to 30 minutes, Ryan came in to check we were okay.

"He worshiped his sister. He went off the rails for a while and we worried for his safety.

"Ellie is four and is too young. She knows her sister is in heaven with her grandad and she reads her a story every day from a book from school.

"Abbie and Sophie are very bitter. They have had kids coming up to them saying all sorts of nasty things about Olivia dying.

"They do not like being in this house. They are on top of each other and constantly fighting.

"It is breaking our hearts to see our family like this and being left in a house like this by someone who is supposed to care about they way we live. We are still waiting for a suitable property."

Marie MacMichael, neighbourhood manager at Severnside Housing, said Severnside was working closely with the Perkins family to find a solution to their overcrowding problem – which she said may be contributing to condensation problems.

"Severnside only has a very limited number of larger homes, which don't often become vacant.

"The Perkins family are one of our highest priority families to move and we will be relocating them as soon as another suitable home becomes available."

By Rebecca Lawrence