A doting dad has honoured his 12 children - including five babies who sadly died - with a full back tattoo. David Bennett had the massive design inked over 45 hours to show his love for his family.
He wanted to document the baby loss journey he faced with wife Katherine. The couple lost baby William when he was just four weeks and four others died before birth.
The huge colour tattoo shows his seven children looking at William in the sky - who is surrounded by four stars in tribute to the unborn babies. Katherine, 44, said the tattoo - which took more than two years to complete - was a special gift on David's 50th birthday.
She said: "We're all about family, it's so important to us, so he has everything he wants, I couldn't think what to get him. But he has talked a lot about having a tattoo so we decided to go for a really special one as it's such an important birthday."
The pair share five children: twins Josh and Stephanie, 16, Cameron, 14, Hannah 12, and Alex, five. And David, 56, a fuel merchant, also has two more kids from a previous relationship - Kayleigh, 33, and Daniel, 30.
He met Katherine in a pub in their hometown of Newcastle in 2003 and the couple married two years later. They paid £3,000 for a vasectomy and a fortune teller told him he would go on to have more kids.
But a doctor said they might not be able to have biological children because the team were only able to reconnect one of David's tubes. However Katherine was happily pregnant with twins just two months after they wed.
"I couldn't believe it when we found out about the twins, I was so shocked and absolutely over the moon," said Katherine. "I didn't think it would happen naturally and we'd started saving for IVF.
Josh and Stephanie were then born after in April 2006. The couple were overjoyed - and surprised to be pregnant with Cameron just a year later.
And they then thought they had completed their family then Hannah arrived in 2009. But, seven years later, Alex arrived - giving them a brood of five.
They have also suffered heartbreaking loss. They became pregnant in 2012 but, tragically, that baby's heart stopped beating in the womb.
The devastated parents also lost twins during pregnancy six months later, and another pregnancy ended after a couple of months. Katherine was then too scared to go for a check-up when she first became pregnant in 2014, but all looked well when she plucked up the courage for the 20-week scan.
But, at 32 weeks the baby had a hole in the heart, thickening of the neck and a condition called 'double bubble' where his tummy wasn't connected to his bowel. He was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome after tests at 35 weeks.
Eventually, William was born, but he was never able to come home from hospital and died in Katherine's arms aged 27 days in November 2015. Katherine said it got "harder and harder" with each loss.
"I was so frightened of losing the baby when I got pregnant with William, and when I heard he had Downs - I cried and cried. Then people with children with downs reached out to me and I realised it didn't matter, this was my baby and I wanted him.
"He was beautiful and he totally changed the way I look at the world. It was so hard, so painful, he was sedated all the time and so full of tubes I only got to hold him 10 times. I'll always feel an emptiness because of his loss."
The couple say their family is complete - and David has had the snip again. He said he will never forget the son he lost and his tattoo is a permanent reminder of his love for him.
