I was told cancer treatment would make me sterile - but now I'm pregnant with 'miracle' baby

Today, she is looking forward to a bright future, having been given the all clear and conceived a 'miracle' baby, while undergoing treatment which she was warned would leave her sterile.

The mother of one from Southampton had found a lump in her breast a year earlier but after undergoing an ultrasound, but not a biopsy, had been told that the lump was not suspicious.

But last May she went back to her GP, as the lump had grown and become more painful. She was shocked when tests revealed that she had stage 3 aggressive breast cancer.

"I was told that the treatment would bring on early menopause and was given the option of freezing my eggs but I didn't want to delay treatment. My partner, Jamie, helped me to feel better about it because we both have children from previous relationships – Grace and Sophia – so not having anymore children didn't feel like the end of the world."

Candice had chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiotherapy.

Some of her treatment made her very ill, and she was hospitalised a number of times with sepsis.

"The treatment was brutal," says the 36-year-old office manager from Southampton.

"I lost all my hair too, and I felt very ugly.

"Not long after Christmas just gone, I was having radiotherapy and felt stressed all the time, but on top of that, I didn't feel right in myself.

"I suffered a lot of hot flushes and was told that the chemo had bought on early menopause so I would be unable to have anymore children, so I was shocked to discover the day before my last radiotherapy that I was 13 weeks pregnant."

Candice explains how she found out that she was pregnant: "I hadn't had a period for a few weeks so I thought I'd do a pregnancy test to rule that out, and it was positive. I phoned my breast cancer nurse, who told me to go to my GP, and I was sent for an emergency scan.

"They asked me how far along I thought I might be if I was pregnant, and I said four to six weeks, so I was very surprised when they said that I was 13 weeks pregnant!

"I was in total shock. It was a mixture of pleasure that I was pregnant, but at the same time, I was worried that all the treatment I'd been having could have had a negative effect on the baby.

"I was due to have my final radiotherapy session the next day but as a precaution for the baby, it was cancelled, and I was taken off Herceptin."

Candice and Jamie's baby is due in August.

"The baby is growing really well," she says.

"He's had lots of tests, including his heart, which could have been affected by the drugs, and everything is fine and the pregnancy is progressing normally.

"I was given the all clear for the cancer a couple of days after I found out that I was pregnant.

"At that point, the cancer had actually taken a bit of a back seat, because I was so elated about being pregnant.

"We've even found out that the baby is a boy, which is great as my partner and I each have a daughter from our previous relationships."

When Candice was diagnosed with cancer, she was afraid that her nine-year-old daughter Grace would be left without a mother. Now she is delighted to be giving Grace a little brother.

She wants to share her story to give hope to other women who fear that cancer will be terminal or that treatment will mean that they cannot have children.

"When I was diagnosed, I thought it was going to be terminal," she says.

"My partner had just lost his mum to lung cancer and the only associations I had with cancer were of people dying and I also made the mistake of looking it up on the internet. It was a really scary time for us.

"It's incredible the difference that a year has made. I'm not a religious person, but the baby is like a gift. I find myself thanking whoever is 'upstairs'.

"I missed out on the first 13 weeks of being pregnant because I didn't know about it, so now I've got all the tests out of the way and I can just enjoy being pregnant."

She concludes: "A year ago, I thought my life was over. Now I feel like it's beginning again."