A courageous Greenock mum has told how her newborn baby saved her life.

Jennifer Stewart and her partner Andrew Shaw were ecstatic when they welcomed their beautiful baby daughter Poppy into the world last April.

But just months later, the 28-year-old mum’s world was turned upside down when she was ‘accidentally’ diagnosed with bowel cancer following a routine operation.

Since then she has undergone further surgery to remove the cancer and is now having chemotherapy.

Despite the fact that she still has three more chemo sessions to go, the brave mum has found the strength to launch an online petition calling for the bowel cancer screening age to be lowered from 50 to 30.

Speaking to our sister paper the Greenock Telegraph in between her treatments, Jennifer said: “If I’d never had my daughter, which resulted in me needing surgery afterwards, my bowel cancer would never have been found.

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“Having my daughter a year ago saved my life.

“I now feel that 50 is too old to be tested as the sooner it’s found the better.

“The screening age should be lowered to 30, as I keep hearing people talking about young people who have been diagnosed.

“I hope that people sign my petition and help save someone’s life.”

Jennifer, of Wellington Street, said doctors first detected something was wrong last October, just six months after she gave birth to Poppy.

She said: “I had a really painful stomach and ended up having emergency surgery at Inverclyde Royal Hospital.

“They discovered I had gallstones, which is common after pregnancy, so they had to operate to remove my gall bladder.

“Dr Jonathan Hannay, who carried out the surgery, told me afterwards that he wasn’t too happy as he noticed that there was something not right about my bowel and that I would need to have further investigations.

“At this point, I mentioned that during the emergency Caesarean when I was having Poppy, I felt a shooting pain up my stomach.

“He said it could have been caused by my bowel being nicked during that procedure or possibly due to Crohn’s disease.”

Jennifer, who works at Wellington Children’s Centre, then underwent a series of tests before undergoing surgery in January this year.

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She added: “They thought it was Crohn’s disease so they performed an operation where they removed part of my bowel.”

About a month later, Jennifer received a troubling phone call from her GP.

She said: “I got a call from Dr Fiona Royale at Greenock Health Centre who asked me to come to the surgery, and she told me to bring my mum.

“As soon as she said that, I knew that something was wrong.”

Jennifer went with Andrew, who works as a technician, and her mum Janet by her side.

She said: “The doctor told me that they removed a tumour from my bowel which was cancerous and that I’d need to undergo tests to make sure it hadn’t spread.

“I was totally shocked because she couldn’t tell me if the cancer was still there or if it had gone. “It was terrifying.

“All I could think about was Poppy because she wasn’t even a year old at the time. “We were all devastated and my mum was really upset.”

Jennifer then faced a battery of tests, including MRI and CT scans, a biopsy of her womb and blood tests.

She said: “It was really scary. “I didn’t know if the cancer was still there and after each test, the doctors would say ‘you have to wait and see’.

“But looking after Poppy really helped me and she distracted me and kept my mind off it.”

After an agonising wait, Jennifer received the news she and her family had been hoping for.

She said: “I was called back up to Inverclyde Royal where I was told that the cancer was nowhere else that they could see.

“But I’m undergoing chemotherapy as a precaution to make sure there are no rogue cells anywhere.” Jennifer has had nine sessions of chemo and is due to finish the course the day before her birthday on August 18.

She said: “I’ve got a tube into the vein in my chest where the chemotherapy is given. “When I started it was horrific. “The chemotherapy is ok now — it just makes me quite tired. “I’ll be over the moon when I finish it.

“After that I will be monitored every six months.”

But Jennifer is now taking on a new fight to have the bowel screening age lowered from 50 to 30.

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At the moment, only people in Scotland aged between 50 and 74 are invited for screening as nine out of 10 cases of bowel cancer occur in people aged 60 or over.

But Jennifer said: “Since I was diagnosed, I’ve heard a lot of people say they know other young people who have been diagnosed with bowel cancer.

“I feel that 50 is quite an old age to be screened.

“It’s such a simple test to do at home, so I would like to see it introduced for people aged 30 and over.

“I actually went to the doctors when I was about 18 as I had a sore stomach.

“They tested my stools and said I had irritable bowel syndrome but it makes me think that maybe the cancer started away back then.”

Jennifer says she has been overwhelmed by the response she’s had to her online petition.

Within hours, she’d collected more than 700 signatures.

As well as the petition, Jennifer and her family are hoping to organise a charity night in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support in September.

She said: “Andrew has been a huge support through this and helped me set up the petition.

“It would be great if it reached the Scottish Parliament.”

Jennifer is keen to thank everyone who has supported her — especially her family and friends and all the nurses and doctors who have helped her on the road to recovery.

She said: “My partner Andrew has been brilliant, as have my mum Janet and Andrew’s family.

“I also want to thank my amazing surgeon Dr Hannay and all the staff at Inverclyde Royal Hospital, who have been fantastic, especially Maureen on the chemo ward.”

To sign Jennifer’s petition go to www.change.org/p/nhs-the-bowel-screening-age-to-30