Mum recalls the moment she lost her precious baby boy Leo after his pram rolled into a river.

Adelaide mum, Kerry Lucas, had taken her sleeping five-month-old baby boy for a jog by the River Torrens in his stroller when she was momentarily distracted by her phone.

In that split second the pram silently slipped into the water and Leo drowned.

Blaming herself, devastated Kerry was overcome by self-hatred. She lost the will to live.

‘I was supposed to be protecting my son,’ the 41-year- old tells New Idea. ‘I couldn’t face getting out of bed. I completely shut down. I had nothing to live for.’

Four months after the tragedy in December 2006 Kerry discovered she was pregnant.

‘It made me feel hope there was a future with joy in it at some point,’ she says. ‘But 
I was very up and down. There were still very many dark hours.’ However, knowing there was an innocent life growing inside her, Kerry reached a turning point.

‘You can’t just shut down. You have to
 get started again. Your heart has to start beating, you have to move on. You’re exhausted some days but you have to keep going.’

‘The glimmer of hope was above me all the time,’ she says. ‘The wheels slowly started turning.’

Sadly she pushed her husband, Wes Legrand, 38, away and their relationship continued to spiral.

‘Parents grieve indefinitely, but they also grieve very differently. In the moment, you don’t see that. You just resent this person because they are not making this pain go away. I resented Wes because he couldn’t fix it,’ Kerry explains.

‘During the pregnancy, we separated and I moved in with my mum. He needed time alone to grieve.

‘My mum shared my grief and my pain, and she was there on the hardest days. She saw me at my worst and still loved me.’

‘Holding Angelina, I felt vulnerable. Did I deserve this?’

Kerry describes her daughter as her ‘saving grace’.

‘Angelina gave me new breath again. I felt like I was drowning.’

Full story in this week’s New Idea

I can vaguely remember this heartbreaking story. It always haunted me and made me hold on extra tight whenever I had my son in his pram. It is such a sad tragedy for any family.

Are you overly cautious when using the pram?

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