A mum was asked by her sick toddler "do you not love me" because she couldn't hold her hand due to an intense phobia of vomiting.
Maddie Blockley said it broke her heart to not be able to even be in the room with three-year-old daughter Amelie Smout when she was unwell.
The 28-year-old mental health nurse, from Burton, Staffordshire, will even throw away freshly-opened food if it doesn't smell "quite right" due to her condition.
As a child she would examine her meals under a bedroom lamp and now often sticks to a diet of generally dry 'safe foods' and avoids meat or dairy as she fears germs will make her sick, reports StaffordshireLive.
The mum-of-one says even watching someone be sick on TV makes her "panic" and "just reading about someone ill makes me feel horrible".
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Maddie was told she has emetophobia - an extreme fear of vomiting - in May 2019.
She said: “When my little girl was ill I couldn’t hold her hand or be in the room for long with her. I felt awful as she said to me: 'Do you not love me because I’m poorly?'
“It broke my heart and the last thing I wanted to do was impose my fear on her or make her think I didn't love her.
"I hate it every time I throw something away - especially with living costs at the moment - but if the food smells slightly off I have to get rid of it.
"Being sick is so scary to me - I can't take any risks."
She also removes herself from partner Jack Smout, 29, if he is under the weather.
She has a glass of water, a fan, pillow spray, mints, a herbal tea and Gaviscon by her bedside table every night before she goes to sleep "just in case".
Her diagnosis came after years of suffering but not understanding what was wrong.
She has since started receiving cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and hypnotherapy, which have begun to help her in an effort to overcome her fear.
Maddie believes she has had symptoms of emetophobia since she was in primary school, but it progressed when she had a bout of food poisoning when she was nine.
She would even scold her hands in hot water in an effort to avoid germs.
Her parents were worried she was developing an eating disorder and sent her to her GP but it left her feeling "misunderstood" as what therapists were telling her did not seem to apply.
Over the last couple of years, Maddie has been able to manage her condition a little better and she said she was in a good place when she had her daughter.
“My phobia comes in waves but at that point I was in a place where I could think about having a child and not worry too much about the morning sickness," she said.
And while she felt sick during the pregnancy at times, she never actually was.
She said her treatment has helped her but she occasionally has 'relapses' such as when Amelie was ill last month.
“I just couldn’t be near her, and it killed me," said Maddie.
“It’s spiralled so that I’m back to eating a very ‘safe diet’ and I’m so cautious that I’ll throw newly opened bags of salad away if it doesn’t smell quite right to me.
"I hate that I do it, but it’s such a massive fear for me.”
Maddie has dropped two-and-a-half stone since January this year because of her changing diet habits.
She said some of her cleaning and cooking rituals have even rubbed off on Jack, who works as a production engineering manager.
She added: "The feeling of fear for being sick is like a trauma. I just hope I can begin to manage it more."
