A couple waiting for a donor heart for their chronically ill baby son have vowed to donate his organs if he dies.
But Chris and Sarah Cookson are still holding out hope, even though doctors say that three-week-old Carter only has three days left to find a donor.
The couple’s heartache comes six years after they lost another son, Charlie, aged two-and-a-half, to an unrelated condition.
But they are determined to help other infants if Carter does not survive.
Delivery driver Chris, 40, said: “If we come to the end and we can save babies with Carter’s organs, then we will do it.
“We cannot expect someone else to do it and not do it ourselves. We are praying that a family is going to do that for us.
“We may not get him home but we have to try to find a heart.”
Carter suffered three cardiac arrests after he was born weighing 5lbs 4oz on Boxing Day.
Due to severe damage to his heart’s left ventricle, a machine pumps blood around his body to keep him alive.
He was fitted with a pacemaker and remains fit for surgery.
But because of complications with the machine, surgeons at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle say time is running out.
Dance teacher Sarah, 43, admits that every day “is a day closer to us losing him”.
But she adds: “He is still on life support but he is a little fighter.
“We have to hope that someone reads about him and remembers our story.
"It is such a tough situation for the donor family to be in – we are asking a hell of a lot. [But] your child could save the life of another. It is the greatest gift.”
Chris and Sarah have joined the Mirror’s campaign to move to opt- out organ donation in England.
PM Theresa May, who is set to introduce the system next year, has sent her support for Carter.
Mrs May will bring in Max and Keira’s Law, named after Mirror campaign boy Max Johnson, 10, of Winsford, Cheshire, and his heart donor Keira Ball, nine, of Barnstaple, Devon, who died in 2017.
Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck, who raised the case in the Commons, has visited Carter.
Currently, there are 6,096 people on the active transplant waiting list – 187 of them are children.
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