With the Debate Raging Over the Morality of Saviour Siblings, Donna Hoped a New Baby Could 'Cure' Her Desperately Ill Son. Now She Knows This Newborn Daughter Can't Help. So Will She Love Her Any Less?

Summary

---

DONNA ZAMMIT'S first, tearful words to her husband Thomas after their baby daughter was born six weeks ago were: 'I did this for Jamie.' Strange words, but then baby Donatella was conceived with the primary intention of her becoming a 'saviour sibling' to her nine-year-old brother Jamie, who suffers from the rare genetic blood disorder Fanconi anaemia.

Their unbridled optimism that Donatella might provide their son with a bone marrow transplant and in doing so save his life has been cruelly short-lived. Two weeks ago the Zammits received the devastating phone call from Great Ormond Street hospital in London to say that tests on Donatella's umbilical cord blood had revealed she was not a perfect tissue match for her brother.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

With the Debate Raging Over the Morality of Saviour Siblings, Donna Hoped a New Baby Could 'Cure' Her Desperately Ill Son. Now She Knows This Newborn Daughter Can't Help. So Will She Love Her Any Less?

She will not save Jamie's life and although Donna and Thomas say they love Donatella just the same, inevitably her birth has been tinged with disappointment.

Mother-of-five Donna, 36, still hasn't broken the devastating news to Jamie, who is already struggling to cope with the physical and emotional he has been a doting older brother. effects of the disease, for fear it will emotionally crush him.

She doesn't regret having Donatella, but in her darker moments she questions the wisdom of raising her son's hopes by telling him, before she fell pregnant, she was going to try for a 'saviour sibling'.

'The time just never seems to be right to tell him,' says Donna, a former advertising PA who lives w...

See the full content of this document

---