LIKE many parents who have suffered a cot death, Bournemouth mum Amanda has been incensed by EastEnders’ handling of the issue.

She lost baby Stevyn in 1990 but, as she explains to Faith Eckersall, the memories can never fade.

“Unlike Ronnie we actually found our baby still alive and managed to revive him but he died, two days later in hospital,” she says, describing an apparently healthy, happy little boy. “Few people seem to know that when a baby dies the police come round,” she says. “Your baby’s cot can become a crime scene. In EastEnders that was one of the few things that was portrayed sensitively but in my day, after Stevyn died in hospital in Southampton, CID were on my doorstep within an hour.

“I was screaming like a lunatic and they wanted to arrest me and take me down to the police station.”

The police can still remove anything from your property in the course of their investigation including, says Amanda: “Mattresses, clothing, toys, bedding and of course, they take away your baby, too.

“You have to endure post mortems. The whole engine kicks in and you have no control over it.” In later years she managed to speak to a high-ranking Bournemouth officer and ‘a lot of progress was made’.

“The police are very sensitive about cot death now,” she says: “But at the time the whole thing was handled diabolically.”

Like many in her position, Amanda steeled herself to watch EastEnders, imagining the issue would be handled sensitively and in such a way that would help others in a similar position. She was appalled.

“I’m sorry but the people who wrote it should be shot,” she says. “I think that Jessie Wallace, who plays Kat, was the more believable but Ronnie was in my eyes totally not believable. The whole episode was highly, highly distressing, highly controversial, very inaccurate and just very insensitively done.”

She wants parents who have been in her situation to know that there is plenty of help for them from groups such as the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.

“Most of all, parents should not blame themselves,” she insists.

l Cot death helpline: 0808 802 6868, fsid.org.uk.