Thirteen years ago, Mansfield police officer Amie Whitehouse was given the bleak news that one of her twins she had already seen cuddling with his sister on a scan might not survive beyond birth because of a potentially fatal heart condition.

Amie and her husband, Simon Whitehouse, who both work for Nottinghamshire Police, had a tough choice to make.

But having seen their boy, Charlie, with his twin, Phoebe, on earlier scans they took the difficult decision to do nothing.

Thankfully, today Charlie is a lively teenager, playing football, fishing and doing many of the other things children his age enjoy.

But first he had to undergo open-heart surgery as a three-year-old.

To thank the British Heart Foundation (BHF) for the support it gave her during some of her darkest days, Amie aims to climb Ben Nevis — the highest peak in the UK — on Saturday, 8th July, to raise money for the charity’s lifesaving research and help offered to families.

Amie, who works as a schools’ early intervention officer for the police, first found out there was a problem with her son’s heart at her 20-week scan.

“When they showed us his heart’s four divided chambers, there was clearly quite a big chunk missing,” she said.

“At that point there were lots of hushed voices. They took us into what I referred to as the ‘bad news room’ at the hospital, where there’s a sofa and a lamp, and said: ‘There’s a bit of a problem with his scan’.

“We went to another hospital and someone more senior looked at the scan. We were taken to another ‘bad news room’ and were given a leaflet that talked about termination and different syndromes that he could have been born with.”

Charlie was diagnosed with a heart condition called Atrioventricular Septal Defect (AVSD), which meant he had a hole in his heart. Amie was offered the chance to have an amniocentesis — a medical procedure that takes a small sample of amniotic fluid for sampling — to see if her son had any specific chromosomal issues.

But when she asked what she called the obvious question of what would happen if there was a problem, the answer didn’t reassure her or Simon.

“They said they would inject his heart to stop it and he would have to be in the womb with Phoebe until he was delivered,” said Amie.

“At that point I was just heartbroken after having seen them both cuddled up together on various scans. The consultant told us the worst-case scenario was that he wouldn’t suffer, he would pass away as he was delivered, or shortly afterwards, so we just decided to leave things as they were.”

When the babies were born in March 2010, Amie and Simon were overjoyed to learn that, apart from the large hole in his heart, Charlie was a healthy little baby.

But the couple couldn’t relax! They were advised Charlie would probably need open heart surgery to fix the hole by the time he was four.

However, as he grew, regular scans showed that his heart was starting to struggle. His surgery was scheduled at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, when he was three.

“He was in theatre for eight hours and it was the absolute worst thing either me or my husband had ever been through,” said Amie. “We went to a local retail park and sat in Greggs in absolute silence with a coffee because we just had to wait — there was nothing that we could do at all.

“The first thing I asked the consultant when we got back to the hospital was ‘is he alive?’. He was like ‘yes, yes, of course he’s alive’!”

The operation was a success. Charlie spent a week in hospital before he was discharged and since then he’s been a healthy boy.

“He still has regular check-ups but he’s 13 now and although his heart has got a very small murmur, there’s nothing major that they think they will have to rectify in the near future, so he’s a healthy lad just doing what other boys his age can do,” added Amie.

“But at every appointment we went to, the BHF nurse was there, every step of the way supporting us and supporting Charlie so I wanted to give something back.”

Amie joined a group from West Notts College, Mansfield, where she worked while taking a career break from the police, to climb Ben Nevis.

“Everyone going had to pick a charity close to their heart to fundraise for,” she said. “It was easy for me — for obvious reasons it was always going to be the British Heart Foundation.”

Amie will just be glad to get up and down again safely – she suffers from a condition called lipoedema which means her legs are likely to swell up and she gets a lot of aches and pains. But she will be spurred on by her cause, with the money she raises going to pay for life-saving research for the BHF.

People can support Amie’s fundraising at her JustGiving page.