IT was no ordinary six-year-old’s birthday tea.

The party at Freddie Martin-Pocock’s home was not just a celebration of birthdays, but of survival.

Freddie, who has Down’s Syndrome, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia almost two years ago.

The disease is a form of cancer of the white blood cells which multiply and crowd out normal cells in bone marrow.

It is most common in young children and old people and has an 85 per cent cure rate if treated, but it kills if left untreated.

Freddie’s mother, Claire Martin, 34, who shared her birthday with Freddie and his twin David yesterday, has virtually lived in hospitals and has had to adjust to her son having a feeding tube attached permanently to his face.

The little boy, who has always been small, has been in and out of hospital and at one time had a colostomy bag.

Freddie, who cannot walk or talk, almost died at least three times during the last year but battled off septic shock and low blood pressure.

He is known as the “little miracle” by doctors.

It has been a rollercoaster-ride for Miss Martin, of Colchester Road, Halstead.

She thought her second youngest boy might never see this day.

But the Richard de Clare school pupil, who has two brothers and a sister, is now doing “fantastically”, she said.

She continued: “After the year we have had, we weren’t sure that we were ever going to make it. This year it’s lovely to see him well when you consider what he’s been like.

“He’s doing fantastically. He’s back to what he used to be before he got the cancer. Really happy, bubbly, and funny and naughty.”

Freddie is in remission and although he is still having chemotherapy, it is “maintenance” treatment for two years.

Miss Martin said the last few weeks, in which Freddie was kept in hospital a week longer than expected, had been hard on his siblings, Chris, Hannah and David.

But, she said, she has told them how doctors are “putting Freddie back together”.

The family hope Freddie will return to school after Easter and build up gradually to full time lessons again.