Parents of a 10-month-old baby are facing a harrowing six months holed-up in a London hospital as their boy battles a rare leukaemia they thought was a chest infection.

Scott and Katie Bridge, who grew up in Tunbridge Wells, were given the diagnosis eight days ago.

Their little "warrior" has already started his first round of intensive treatment, which will see his body ravaged by drugs as he fights the disease.

Over the next six months he will be pumped full of medicine in four rounds of chemotherapy, each lasting between four and six weeks, to battle acute myeloid leukaemia, a condition which affects only 100 patients under 19 every year.

At the moment, Teddy looks like a typical, happy baby boy but mum Katie, 31, knows the next few weeks are going to see enormous changes as the treatment will see him lose his hair and his body erupt into sores.

She said: "He is such a bright little boy. You wouldn't know he was unwell.

"His hair is wild but we are not even brushing it at the moment. We're making the most of it before he loses it.

"The doctors are not sure about his eyebrows and eyelashes, but they said he will definitely lose his head of hair, which is a shame."

There are other side effects to the strong drugs which are going to take their toll on Teddy.

Katie said: "The doctors said it can make him really quite sick. And he will probably suffer from mucolitis, which is where the mucus inside the body causes damage to all the skin.

"It could affect his mouth and he may need to be tube-fed because his mouth will get too sore for him to eat normally."

Katie, who works in Tunbridge Wells, said they were warned about a whole host of side effects.

"Some of them are quite scary," she said. "But when you balance up the risks, we don't have a choice. He has to have this treatment."

The nightmare began just a few weeks ago.

Katie said: "He was a really well baby up until about seven months old. Then he suddenly kept getting chest infections back-to-back and it felt like he was on antibiotics constantly.

"Then we ended up taking him in and out of A&E, up to five times within a matter of two weeks.

"Eventually he was admitted and put on oxygen. It turned out he had pneumonia.

"At first, just finding out he had pneumonia was difficult because he is so little and it can be quite dangerous. That was quite traumatic anyway, having to take him to hospital and giving him oxygen to breathe. "

But that was just the beginning of a diagnosis which has turned the family's world upside down.

"While he was in being treated, they ran some blood tests and one of them showed some dodgy-looking cell counts.

"They were due to discharge us but they told us to sit tight and they sent the bloods up to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

"The next day we found out that Teddy was actually fighting leukaemia."

"Our world has been turned upside down but we are armoured up and ready to fight..."

"Nothing can prepare a parent for the heartbreaking news that your baby is fighting leukaemia. Our world has been turned upside down but we are armoured up and ready to fight."

Katie said everything happened very fast and they were transferred from Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Pembury straight to Great Ormond Street Hospital the next night.

She said: "This is where we'll be for the next six months while he has his treatment. If he was older he might have some of his treatment closer to home but because he is an infant it carries a lot of extra risk so they like to keep them close by."

Katie is sleeping in Teddy's hospital room on a pull-out bed, but the hospital says it cannot provide accommodation for both parents.

Katie said: "It's hard enough for us to cope with as it is, without having to separate at the end of the day and one of us having to walk away and leave Teddy."

The family are having to fork out on Airbnbs to ensure Scott does not waste valuable time on the 104-mile daily round-trip between Kent and London to be close to their son. They have managed to find a hotel nearby which is offering them a discount price of £90 a night.

Katie is grateful, but says that over the course of six months costs are going to escalate.

"It's tricky because we know we have to find some sort of balance and new normal with this but at the moment it is all so new and Teddy has just started his treatment.

"We want to see how Teddy takes to the first round of treatment and what the next six weeks looks like. We want to be together."

The family know they have a steep battle on their hands but Teddy is pushing them through.

"He's won over all the nurses on the ward. He is definitely a ward favourite," Katie said. "He has done us proud. He's keeping us going."

Scott added: "This little cub is nothing short of a hero."

Katie – who has put her work at Town and Country Housing housing association in Tunbridge Wells on hold for the foreseeable future – said one of the hardest parts so far was the first day leaving Teddy in an operating theatre with a bunch of strangers.

She said: "It was so scary leaving my baby in a room full of people we had met 60 seconds ago, particularly because Teddy was at 10 times greater risk of complications because of his pneumonia."

Husband Scott, 31, said: "To carry my world in my arms into the surgery room to watch them pump anaesthetic into him while I held him until he went limp in my arms, absolutely broke my heart.

"Then to have to turn my back and leave him in the hands of people I had just met to perform potentially life-threatening surgery on him."

When he and Katie were called 20 minutes later to say Teddy was back to Elephant ward, it was the first moment of relief he had felt in the battle.

He said: "You have never seen two ugly sobbing adults clamber into a lift and race back up those floors to see him, hold him and feel him again, knowing that one of the biggest steps of this fight was over.

"It's a tiny step on our long fight ahead but a huge step in the right direction. To say I'm proud of him would be an absolute disgrace of an understatement."

"This little cub is nothing short of a hero"

During the operation Teddy had some bone marrow samples taken and the family now face the agonising wait to see whether he will need a bone marrow transplant and what his prognosis looks like.

Katie said: "We are slowly getting the puzzle pieces so we can put our little warrior back together."

Teddy's auntie Rosie Bowles has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to pay for the hotel bills and cover costs the family will struggle to meet while they are both not working.

Rosie, who lives just a few doors away from her nephew in Crowborough, said: "Anyone who knows baby Teddy will know just how much of a ray of sunshine he really is, such a huge part of so many people's lives.

"The absolute heartache and worry this brings upon his family is indescribable.

"Unfortunately GOSH doesn’t provide accommodation for both parents. Local charity accommodation is full and so, hotels or Airbnbs are their only option to be by each other's side throughout this incredibly tough journey.

"The financial pressure this puts on them as a family, alongside the inability to work – with bills to pay and all other costs they will face along the way – is a pressure they shouldn’t be worrying about at such an intense time."

You can also follow Teddy's journey on Katie and Scott's personal Instagram accounts.