Matt Sperryn dropped baby son Riley off at nursery for the first time – and kissed his chubby cheeks goodbye.

The eight-month-old had been his usual happy self that morning as he played with his big sister, Lily, and ate his breakfast.

But just hours later Matt and girlfriend Angel Wood could only watch helplessly as doctors at Good Hope Hospital tried in vain to resuscitate their baby, whose heart had shut down suddenly.

Now, almost a year on, the dad has spoken for the first time about a tragedy the couple are still trying to come to terms with.

“I had no qualms about taking Riley to nursery that day,” said Matt, aged 35. “Everything seemed normal. He had a bit of a cold but there were no signs that anything was seriously wrong, there was no need to take him to a doctor.

“I went to work as normal and didn’t think anything of it. The next thing I had a phone call from one of the girls at the nursery to say that Riley had stopped breathing.

“I just threw the phone down and ran out the door.”

Within minutes Matt was back outside Langley Gorse Day Nursery, Sutton Coldfield, where he saw the blue lights of an ambulance and air ambulance.

But Riley had already been taken by earlier ambulance to Good Hope.

Matt raced there where he was met by a distraught Angel, who had taken the train to Birmingham earlier that morning for her first day back as a HR assistant.

Over the next few hours, emergency staff tried desperately to restart Riley’s heart but it would not beat on its own and he was eventually pronounced dead.

Nurses brought his body to Angel and Matt. “I held him in my arms and didn’t want to let him go,” said Matt, who works as an asset protection advisor. “I didn’t want to say goodbye.

“Angel couldn’t hold him. I don’t think she could believe what had happened.”

In a daze, the grief-stricken couple, from Strawberry Lane, Lichfield, drove to pick five-year-old Lily up from school.