A COUPLE will be spending a bitter-sweet Christmas at their five-month-old daughter's hospital bedside tomorrow.

Karen, 28, and Daniel Stanbrook, 25, from Ryde on the Isle of Wight, discovered their daughter Vicky had leukaemia only seven weeks ago and now they are constantly with her, willing her to get better soon.

The couple are staying at a 'home from home' run by specialist children's charity Clic while little Vicky is in hospital and they will celebrate Christmas Day on the Piam Brown ward at Southampton General Hospital.

But the Stanbrooks are finding the festive season doubly difficult as their two-year-old daughter Gaby will not be with them.

"She really isn't happy when she is over here so we decided it would be better if she stayed with Dan's parents, Ron and Lyn Stanbrook, in Ryde," Karen told the Daily Echo.

"She loves her little sister. She knows she is quite ill and we have to stay with her - so she does understand."

Doctors initially thought Vicky was suffering from a chest infection but when she failed to respond to treatment they realised she was more seriously ill than at first expected.

Karen said: "It's unusual for a baby under a year old to develop leukaemia, apparently.

"It has been an emotional roller-coaster.

"She is in remission now but she keeps getting infections.

"We have started to wonder when it is ever going to stop," she said.

The Stanbrooks are full of praise for the work that Clic does in providing accommodation for parents with children suffering from cancer.

The charity runs five homes-from-home close to regional oncology centres across the UK - based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Oxford, Southampton and Plymouth - providing comfortable, self-catering, free accommodation for as long as the family needs.

"We would have been up the river without a paddle - and having to go and back and forth from the Island," said Karen.

"This way we can relax, cook ourselves a meal and you can chat with the other parents at the house."