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TINE GREGORY AND her husband Paul seemed to have the perfect life: a young, healthy couple, in love, happily married and expecting their first baby. A trouble-free pregnancy and an easy birth and the picture was complete. With baby Frederick in their lives they were a family.

But when Frederick was three months old, they noticed a small indent at the back of his head.

'We knew this wasn't right,' says Gregory. 'We went to see the doctor, had an MRI scan and our whole world collapsed.' Frederick was diagnosed with Walker Walburg syndrome - a brain, eye and muscle disorder - but the doctors couldn't say for sure how bad it was.

'It was the worst time of my life,' she says. 'At 29 I just didn't think of it as a possibility. He was our first child, our perfect and beautiful little boy. Basically, we spent the next month crying, but the good thing was we did it together.'

Today, although now 10, Frederick is physically and mentally still a newborn.

Sharon Glick, director of St John's Counselling Service, says that when a couple face a major tragedy, it can easily create divisiveness in the relationship. 'People see children as part of themselves. A child who is beautiful and brilliant is seen to be a good reflection of its parents.'

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