Mum who found breast lump during breastfeeding class says ‘Cancer took the choice away'

This mum revealed how she found a lump in her right breast during a breastfeeding course.

Paramedic Sarah Husband, 39, was diagnosed with cancer just one week after her son was born – leaving her ‘gutted’ after medics told her she would have to stop breastfeeding while she had scans and started cancer treatment.

Sarah and her husband, John, 40, were in the class focused on expressing colostrum, the first breast milk produced immediately after birth, when she felt the lump.

“If I hadn’t done that (class), I wouldn’t have been pushing so hard,” Sarah said.

“But I didn’t panic because I know that milk ducts get blocked.”

After discovering the lump during the class in her third trimester, Sarah saw her doctor and was scanned by ultrasound and given a biopsy.

Sarah is an NHS paramedic (PA Real Life)

While she waited for her results, she was induced and gave birth to her son Ted a week early.

A week after Ted’s birth, as she was breastfeeding him, an oncologist confirmed a 4cm tumour.

“We’re going to have to be very direct with you – you have got breast cancer,” Sarah remembered the oncologist telling her.

“The tumour is fairly large, we know that it’s rapidly growing and it’s also very unusual.”

Two weeks later, after specialist testing at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, she found out the lump was an aggressive HER2-positive breast cancer.

Sarah and her husband John have two children (PA Real Life)

Sarah, who is originally from London, and was already the mother of 15-year-old son, Charley, told PA Real Life: “Actually, that first week, (Ted) took to the breast really well.

“I’d struggled with my first child, so I’d gone to all the classes this time and I wanted to get this right.

“I felt very strongly about wanting to breastfeed for as long as I possibly could… so when they said to stop breastfeeding, I just remember looking at my baby and thinking, ‘How?’

“I was gutted.”

Sarah explained how she reacted after being told she would have to stop breastfeeding to have an MRI.

Sarah began cancer treatment weeks after Ted was born (PA Real Life)

“They said to do it slowly, but I was so scared that if I didn’t do it quickly, it was going to take longer to get the MRI.

“So, I actually just went cold turkey, which was against advice… they dried up very, very quickly, but it was just extremely painful.

“I remember having a night where I couldn’t even sit up in bed because my chest was so uncomfortable.”

Sarah said her pre-cancer health and fitness was ‘really good’ but she was aware of her family history of breast cancer.

“My mother had it when she was in her early 40s, both of her sisters, her mother, my cousins on my maternal side and my paternal grandmother too,” she said.

“But yet there’s no genetic variation found.”

Sarah said she feels 'really luck' (PA Real Life)

She endured 20 rounds of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and five rounds of high dose radiotherapy, leaving her feeling ‘very lucky’ to have been told she had no signs of an active disease in April 2025.

Sarah, who has not returned to her work as a paramedic yet, reflected on what it was like to have cancer treatment while caring for a newborn: “It was terrifying because I just thought, ‘Am I going to be here to see you grow up?’

“Like so many mothers, I imagined feeding my baby, comforting him and creating that bond. Instead, cancer took the choice away from me before I even had the chance.

“There were days I felt exhausted, sick and frightened, but motherhood doesn’t stop because you have cancer.

“My boys gave me a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

Sarah has revealed her story as part of World Cancer Research Fund’s Every Step Tells a Story campaign. To learn more, visit wcrf.org/support-us/every-step.

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact Macmillan’s Cancer Support Line on 0808 808 00 00, 8am–8pm seven days a week.