A mother has told of the devastating moment her two-year-old daughter died after swallowing a button battery that burned through her oesophagus and a main artery. Harper-Lee Fanthorpe died after what began as a seemingly normal Sunday morning.

Mum Stacy Nicklin said that the toddler was pointing to her mouth, something she often did, as she had suffered from septic tonsillitis from a very young age. Stacy, 40, then tucked Harper-Lee into bed before heading off to work.

But she received a frantic phone call an hour later from daughter Jamie-Leigh, 23, who said that the tot was spitting blood. She rushed home to find Harper-Lee in an ambulance. “I’d told Harper-Lee that her throat would be better soon – little did I know that she was telling me she’d swallowed something,” said Stacy, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs.

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“I put her in my bed with Jamie-Leigh. I was only at work for an hour when I had a feeling that I needed to check my phone. There were missed calls and messages that didn’t make sense so I FaceTimed Jamie-Leigh – and Harper was covered in blood.

“A friend from work rushed me home and the paramedics said they needed to wait for a doctor because they’d never seen anything like it before and they didn’t know where the bleeding was coming from.”

Stacy, who has another daughter, Kyla, 18, says that Harper-Lee was rushed to Royal Stoke University Hospital where a camera was inserted to find the source of the bleeding. Surgeons confirmed they’d discovered a button battery from an LED light remote lodged inside Harper-Lee’s body.

It had burned through her oesophagus and into a main artery leading to her heart. Doctors said Harper-Lee needed to be transferred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital but would not survive the journey.

Stacy said: “When they said she’d swallowed a battery, I had no idea she wouldn’t make it. Then they said she wouldn’t survive and I collapsed. I said ‘Please try and do everything you can to save my baby girl’.

“All I can remember is him saying ‘I'm so sorry’. That's all I heard before I went into shock and fell to the floor. I kept saying ‘I need to go and tell my other daughters’ but they already knew because they heard me scream, which was so piercing.

She died on May 21, 2021.

Despite her heartbreak, Stacy has dedicated herself to raising awareness about the dangers of button batteries. She added: “Life in the past five years has been so hard. I'm still grieving. I've lost friendships and relationships with family members because they remind me of Harper-Lee.

“Anyone that was close to Harper I don't see or speak to anymore because when I see them, I see her. I've been raising awareness for the last five years because I promised my baba that I wouldn't let her die in vain. I don't want any other families going through what me, Jamie-Leigh and Kyla have gone through.”