TRIBUTES were paid last night to the memory of a remarkable mother who refused life-saving cancer treatment to protect her unborn baby.

Tragic Bernadette Mimura - known as Milai - lived just long enough to see her son, Nathan, baptised in a schoolroom used as a church at Ingleby Barwick, near Middlesbrough.

Bernadette was diagnosed with cancer only a month into her pregnancy.

Last night, her heartbroken partner, Adam Taylor, told how doctors offered her a terrible choice - your unborn baby or your life.

Paying tribute to Bernadette's courage, Adam explained how doctors urged her to try life-saving drugs. But there was a terrible price.

"The doctors told her you are going to have to terminate the baby to receive the treatment," said Adam.

"Being a Catholic, for her abortion was out of the question. It was a tough decision, but the decision was we could not give up on Nathan."

Bernadette was given a mild form of chemotherapy to do no more than suppress the illness while she carried Nathan, who was born two months premature.

Adam said: "Nathan was born very premature. Her calcium levels shot up and the hospital induced him."

Nathan was born fit and healthy, but the parents knew it was too late to save Bernadette.

Shortly after Nathan was baptised, she was admitted to Butterwick Hospice, and a week later she died.

Canon Alan Sheridan, who performed the christening as parish priest of the combined parishes of St Mary and St Romuald at Yarm and that of St Therese's at Ingleby Barwick, recognised her remarkable sacrifice last night.

He said: "She arrived in the parish about the beginning of this summer and asked for our prayers.

"She was very upset. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, but because it was going to affect the baby, she refused treatment.

"The whole thing is just very, very sad.

"At the centre of it is her faith, which always shone through. She did not let her illness get her down. She just kept hoping for a cure and she was always looking forward."

Nathan, now four months, will stay with his father, who lives at Ingleby Barwick.

Canon Sheridan is asking for prayers for Bernadette - and donations towards the cost of taking the 37-year-old's body back to her native Philippines, so her family can bury her.

The Filipino community on Teesside is raising money towards the appeal.

It will cost £3,700 to transport Bernadette's body, and any money left over will go to helping her three other children, Nanam, 11, Mika, seven, and five-year-old Miko, whose Japanese father was divorced from Bernadette.

Canon Sheridan added: "It's very easy for us at Ingleby Barwick to focus on ourselves, but I want people to recognise we are part of a global community - a global church and that the church is there to help."

He hopes that the government in the Philippines will make a grant available to have the three youngsters flown home.

* If you would like to help, donations should be sent c/o Canon Alan Sheridan, 9 Holystone Drive, Ingleby Barwick, Stockton TS17 OPW.