Baby joy eases mum's pain

Jan 13 2006 By Alison Dayani, Birmingham Mail

EVERY step and every movement was agony for Kelly Wacogne as her body was wracked with an arthritic-type illness - until a tiny miracle came along.

Severe pain in her joints and stiffness left her in constant pain, housebound and unable to do the sports she loved.

Tennis and rollerblading were both out after a hip operation at the age of 30 because of the illness, Ankylosing Spondylitis.

But an unexpected breakthrough came when Kelly and medic husband Ian, from Harborne, celebrated the birth of baby Lewis.

The bundle of joy was the best treatment Kelly could have ever imagined.

"The symptoms could be very disabling and incredibly painful, but when I got pregnant I had to come off all my medication to protect the baby," said 34-year-old Kelly.

"Surprisingly I had a brilliant pregnancy with hardly any flare-ups and having Lewis actually eased my condition.

"The one side of my hip was deteriorating and needed replacing but, after the pregnancy, it stopped getting any worse and I haven't needed an operation."

Lewis is now a 22-month-old toddler and keeps mum Kelly, a former play specialist at Birmingham Children's Hospital, on her feet.

Housewife Kelly was 18 when she started getting aches in her thumbs and knees, originally diagnosed as growing pains.

But the pains grew worse after she married in 1999 and moved to Australia, where she struggled to walk and was eventually diagnosed with the condition.

"I was hardly able to walk and had to call off plans to do a trek along the Inca Trail," adds Kelly.

"The pain would come and go in stages and I never thought having Lewis could change my life so much.

"He's gorgeous and he's made things better than I could ever have imagined."

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