My kids insist on sleeping with me after their ‘healthy’ dad, 30, died in bed next to me – they’re scared I’m next
A HEARTBROKEN mum has told how her kids insist on sleeping in bed next to her after their dad died in his sleep. Amelia, 29, woke up to find her partner Damien Jones, 30, unresponsive in bed next to her last May. The mum battled to resuscitate him but Damien, who died from an undiagnosed […]
A HEARTBROKEN mum has told how her kids insist on sleeping in bed next to her after their dad died in his sleep.
Amelia, 29, woke up to find her partner Damien Jones, 30, unresponsive in bed next to her last May.
The mum battled to resuscitate him but Damien, who died from an undiagnosed heart condition, could not be saved.
Nine months on, Amelia says her children continue to sleep next to her every night – and they are terrified the same will happen to her.
She explained: “Since his death the kids insist on sleeping with me because they worry that they might lose me during the night, as they lost their dad.
“My son is only six yet he feels a responsibility to protect me and it breaks my heart.”
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She added: “It’s a huge shock. He seemed so fit and healthy and was always in the gym.
“His final words to me, the night before he passed, were: ‘I love you,’ and we’d watched a film in bed with the kids, so we had a lovely evening, all together. That is such a comfort to me.”
Shortly before his death, Damien became ill with breathing difficulties.
He went to A&E but was sent home after doctors told him he had a muscle injury caused by exercise.
The loving dad continued to feel unwell and two days later, before going to sleep, he told Amelia he loved her for the last time.
Amelia said: “We all watched a film in bed, he was in a good mood, and he said: ‘I love you’ before he fell asleep.
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“We have a huge bed, and the two kids were sleeping in the middle of us. We had such a lovely last night, all together.”
The following morning Amelia found Damien dead beside her.
She said: “I began CPR on Damien, willing him to wake up. The children were watching as I tried to revive him for almost 20 minutes, as we waited for the ambulance. It was horrific for them.”
Damien and Amelia, from Wrexham, North Wales, had been together for nine years.
They were desperate for a baby but suffered a devastating eight miscarriages.
In June 2014, they lost a daughter, Ava-May, to stillbirth.
Amelia said: “We were devastated by each miscarriage and Damien took it very badly. The loss of our daughter was especially tough.
“Damien suffered with epilepsy but he used exercise and sport to help him, and he coped well.”
The couple had almost given up hope of having their own family, but their son, David, now five, was born in May 2015, followed by a daughter, Esme-Rose, now four.
Proud Amelia said Damien “loved being a dad” and was like “a big kid himself”.
He was pronounced dead at hospital, aged 30.
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He was buried the following month, alongside the couple’s stillborn daughter.
Amelia waited until February this year to discover that Damien had died from cardiac arrhythmia and stenotic coronary artery atheroma.
