But the little boy never reached his first birthday. He died at three months.

"We got up in the morning and went to his cot and he wasn't breathing," said mum Pat.

"He just looked like he'd gone to sleep and never woken up again."

Christopher had been a happy and healthy baby who was adored by his mum, dad Keith and four-year-old sister Laura.

"It was devastating for all of us," said Pat, a 34-year-old childminder.

"It's one of those things at the back of your mind and as a new parent you are always aware of it.

"But you always think something like this happens to someone else in a different town in a different part of the country."

Cot death strikes without warning and claims nine tiny lives in Britain each week.

Doctors don't know the cause and no one is to blame. But it leaves parents struggling to come to terms with their loss.

"Every death of a child is hard to understand but with a cot death there is rarely an explanation," said Pat.

"There are so many questions to ask but many will never be answered."

The results of Christopher's post mortem blamed 'sudden infant death syndrome.'

Nothing else was found to be wrong with him.

"After he died we went through so many feelings,' said Pat.

"There was a lot of grief, anger and a small amount of guilt although you can't really understand why."

The family supported each other as they faced life without their baby boy with help from friends and their GP.

Another invaluable source of comfort was a befriender provided by the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.

She too had lost a child through cot death.

"She didn't provide us with sympathy," said Pat. "It was empathy because she had been through it herself.

"It just gives you a little bit of comfort because you know that there is somebody there if you ever needed them."

Gradually she and her husband began to come to terms with losing their baby and decided to try for another child.

On New Year's Eve 1993 Pat gave birth to her second daughter Jessica.

She was the first baby in the Holmes Chapel area to be monitored under the Care of the Next Infant scheme.

The programme hopes to reassure parents who have lost a baby to cot death.

Doctors have no medical evidence to suggest that a family who have already lost a baby through cot death are more likely to lose another.

But Pat says there isn't any proof that they aren't either.

"Normally when you have your second child you are more relaxed because you've been through it before," said the former nurse.

"But when we were having Jessica it was like having our first child again."

Pat and Keith, a policeman, were given a monitor to check their baby daughter's breathing each night.

She wore it round her tummy every night until she was five months old.

"We had quite a few panics when she got older," said Pat.

"It would start bleeping and we would run upstairs to find Jessica chewing wires."

Jessica is now five and attends Holmes Chapel Primary School with her big sister Laura, who was with her mum and dad when they found Christopher.

Both girls know all about their brother whose photographs hang on the wall alongside many family portraits.

"Photographs have been very important to me since Christopher died," said Pat, of Byley Lane, Cranage.

"I need to record things."

Pat now raises money for the foundation and is also a befriender, providing advice and support to recently bereaved parents.

"We're not counsellors," she said. "Instead we are there to speak, listen and offer a friendly face and support."

And if occasionally things get too upsetting for her, she still has her own befriender, now a close friend, to rely on.

"I think death will always be very painful and as a family we will always feel something at special times of the year like Christmas and birthdays," she said.

"Christopher's death will always be there but slowly we have learned to live with it."

Rainbow-leader Pat is raising money for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths on Sunday May 16. Guides, Scouts, cubs, brownies and rainbows will take part in 'The Big Push' - raising cash by pushing anything they can find round Shakerley Mere in Cranage.

Anyone who wants to make a donation or would like more information on the foundation can contact Pat on 01477 537148 or 0780 8450960.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.