Woman 'grateful to be alive' after finding pregnancy symptom she thought nothing of

A mother was told she had three cancerous tumours in her right breast while pregnant with her first child.

Rhiannon Baxter, 35, a pharmacy care coordinator, said her breasts felt “tender” when she was approximately 34 weeks pregnant.

After feeling a lump on her right nipple, she believed it was a blocked milk duct and “thought nothing of it”. Now she feels "grateful to be alive" ahead of her son's first birthday.

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Given her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and her grandfather and uncle had died of cancer, Rhiannon was urged to “get it checked” – and within two weeks, she was booked in for her first appointment at Clatterbridge Hospital, in the Wirral, where she underwent a scan followed by several biopsies and mammograms.

After the first scan, she was handed a Macmillan card by a breast cancer nurse, who informed her the lump may be “sinister” – and weeks later, she received the devastating news she had invasive cancer.

“I was scared because I had finally got to a point in life where I loved my life and I didn’t want to leave it, and I thought, I’ve got a husband and a baby now, I cannot leave them,” she told PA Real Life.

“I just thought, I can’t die, I have too many people to live for.”

In order to “get the ball rolling” with treatments, Rhiannon, who lives in Wallasey, was induced at 38 weeks pregnant, which is considered full-term, and she gave birth to her “perfect” son Alvie, now 11 months, on September 22, 2022.

Just four weeks later, she underwent a mastectomy to remove her right breast, but since pre-cancer had been found in her left breast as well, she underwent a second mastectomy six weeks later.

“It was the worst