A mother has died from cancer weeks after refusing chemotherapy treatment to spare the life of her unborn son.

Doctors had urged Lorraine Allard, 33, to terminate her 23-week pregnancy days after she had terminal liver cancer diagnosed on November 5 last year. She was told that she could not start chemotherapy while she was pregnant. But she insisted that she wanted to keep her baby, her fourth child, and told her family: “If I am going to die, my baby is going to live.”

Doctors respected her wishes and arranged for her to have a caesarean at 28 weeks, giving her baby the chance of life and enabling her to start her treatment then.

However, Liam was born on November 18, three weeks before her planned caesarean. He was 15 weeks premature and weighed only 1lb 11oz.

Mrs Allard, a former accounts clerk, started her delayed treatment immediately. She was able to make regular visits to her son as he lay in a cot in the special care baby unit at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

She had hoped to live to see Liam leave hospital to come home to the family in St Olaves near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. But she died on January 18, days after a scan revealed that her treatment was having little effect.

Her husband, Martyn, 34, has now been left to bring up their baby Liam and daughters Leah, 10, Amy, 8, and Courtney, 20 months.

Mr Allard, an oilfield technician, said: “She knew that she had an incurable illness so her priority was to make sure that Liam was born safely. She was desperate to see him come home and used to ring the hospital every day to check on his progress, but sadly she did not live to see that day.”

Mr Allard said that when his wife began suffering stomach cramps and pains doctors thought that she had gallstones. Tests later confirmed that she had two secondary tumours on her liver, one of them 13cm in diameter. She was told that she probably had had a primary cancer growing undiagnosed in her bowel for years.

Mr Allard said: “The doctors basically told her that she was in the later stages of cancer and there was no chance of saving her. The only thing they could do was prolong her life for a while by giving her chemotherapy, but they were unable to do that while she was pregnant so they advised her to have a termination.

His mother, Valerie Allard said: “Lorraine knew that there was no hope for her. She just said, ‘I want to do the best I can for my baby’. She knew that it was a terminal illness, but the idea of the chemotherapy was to give her a little more time with her children and family. She would not contemplate terminating her pregnancy to start it so she and the doctors came up with the compromise of having the caesarean.

“We will never know for sure what would have happened if the treatment had started a couple of weeks earlier, but I don’t think it would have made any difference. She was a fighter to the end.”

Mrs Allard’s father, Tom Berry, said that his daughter lived life to the full and was always thinking of others.

“I was overwhelmed by the way that she took it,” he said. “She has always been a superb girl and a grafter who did not want to rely on anybody. She lived for her husband and her children. She was a big personality with a heart of gold.”

Liam is still in the hospital baby care unit. He now weighs 4lb 8oz and the family are hoping that he will soon be well enough to go home.

Mrs Allard’s funeral will take place on February 4 at the church in her former home village of Hopton, Norfolk, where her youngest daughter was christened last year and where she married her husband four years ago. They had been together since she was 16.

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