• Laura Gray and Jordan Monaghan's baby daughter Ruby died in January
• This month Miss Gray, 20, found one-year-old son Logan dead at home
• Couple are undergoing tests to determine if faulty genes are to blame
  

By Hugo Gye

PUBLISHED: 06:55 EST, 28 August 2013 | UPDATED: 06:55 EST, 28 August 2013

A couple suffered a double heartbreak when both of their young children died within eight months of each other.

Laura Gray and Jordan Monaghan's newborn daughter Ruby died on New Year's Day, shortly after she was discharged from hospital.

And earlier this month, Miss Gray found the couple's son Logan dead from unknown causes at their home in Blackburn, Lancashire aged just 21 months.

The pair are undergoing genetic tests to determine whether the children were killed by a hereditary condition - and fear that other young relatives could be at risk.

They are also adamant they will not have any more children due to the danger of passing on any defective genes.

Ruby was born in December last year, but had to return to the Royal Blackburn Hospital three weeks after her birth when her parents noticed she was struggling for breath.

Doctors diagnosed her with bronchitis, but on New Year's Eve they allowed her to go home as her condition had improved over the two days she was in hospital.

However, in the early hours of the morning, Miss Gray and Mr Monaghan found that she had stopped breathing and she was rushed to hospital, although she could not be saved.

An initial post-mortem was inconclusive, but an inquest later ruled that she had died from bronchopneumonia.

On August 17, tragedy struck the family once again when Miss Jordan, 20, went to wake Logan up from his afternoon nap and found him lying dead.

'He went for his nap and just didn't wake up,' she said. 'He woke up in the morning absolutely fine, and he was playing around. There was nothing wrong with him whatsoever.

'He went for his afternoon sleep as normal. I went in to wake him up and found him like that. I knew when I looked at him, I knew he'd passed away.

'The ambulance came and they tried their best to work on him, there were loads of them, they tried for quite a long time, but they said there was nothing else they could do.'

The post-mortem was unable to determine how he died, and the couple have no idea what could have caused the tragedy.

'They're checking our genes, we don't know whether it could be genetic,' Miss Jordan said. 'But we've already said we won't have any more children. We can't take that risk.'

Her fiancé Mr Monaghan added: 'They've taken biopsies but the results will take up to three months to come back.

'It's a waiting game, which is really hard - we just want answers now.'

Miss Jordan said she was worried about the health of her four-year-old nephew Connor, who could be affected if it turns out that the children's health problems were hereditary.

She paid tribute to her family for supporting them through the ordeal of losing two children in eight months.

'We'd like to say a big thank you to all the family for all the support and help,' she said. 'We're a close family. We've got great family support, they're helping us to get through it.

'We're all absolutely distraught, absolutely devastated. We're all shocked, we can't believe it. He was beautiful, a little monkey, so mischievous. We strongly miss him and he will never be forgotten.

'He had such a beautiful smile and he was the most gorgeous child ever. He was such a daddy's boy and his face lit up every time he saw any of us.'

During the inquest into Ruby's death, the coroner said: 'I can't begin to imagine the loss of a child and certainly one as young and as precious as Ruby. It would certainly seem to me there was nothing yourself or Jordan could have done.'