Comedian Rob Delaney details baby son’s heartbreaking death

“Catastrophe” star Rob Delaney has shared heartbreaking details about hearing his infant son had a brain tumor — and his tragic death at age 2.

The US comedian has written a book, “A Heart That Works,” where he tells the story of his son Henry’s diagnosis and death on Rob’s 41st birthday.

Rob’s career was peaking in 2016 when he won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for comedy writing. The very next day he and wife Leah were told Henry might have a brain tumor.

An MRI confirmed their worst fears and the couple “sank inside ourselves”.

“(It was) the heaviest pain in the world,” Rob wrote in an extract from the book published by The Times. “I felt like I had suddenly quadrupled in weight, and an oily, black whirlpool began to swirl where my heart had been.”

Two weeks after his first birthday, Henry underwent surgery in an attempt to remove the tumor.

Rob said the days leading up to the operation were “terrifying.” He and Leah booked a hotel room next to the hospital to stay at during the day-long surgery.

“At the hotel we were so crazy and scared and holding each other so tight, we actually wound up having sex, twice, a few hours apart,” Rob wrote.

“I realize it sounds insane to say that we had sex twice while our one-year-old had brain surgery across the street.

“I would normally omit that very personal fact, which might horrify some people, but I am sharing it primarily for the benefit of other parents who might have been through something similar and were terrified and crying and nearly hyperventilating with anxiety.

“I guess we were just so scared and wanted to be so close, and the horror of what was happening around the block didn’t erase the fact that we loved each other, and sometimes that love manifests as sex, even in the absolute worst of times.”

While the surgeon was able to remove “all the tumor he could find,” Henry was left unable to swallow afterward and his condition continued to worsen.

Months of chemo followed, prompting Leah and Rob to make “an active decision to protect our marriage, day in, day out.”

“The way this manifested was simple. Leah and I would go on a date once a week, even when Henry was in the ICU. It didn’t have to be a fancy restaurant with a tablecloth. It could be a walk around a park, holding hands. It could be breakfast near the hospital. But we had to look at each other and touch each other and check in and see how the other one was doing. Then we carried that communication through the rest of the day, touching, speaking, just listening to each other’s voices.

“I hesitate to give advice, but I have to say that if you’re ever in a situation like the one in which my family found ourselves, do not forget to love, touch and look into the eyes of every other family member regularly.”

After more than a year in hospital, Henry was finally able to come home. But it wasn’t long before scans revealed the cancer had returned. He died in January 2018.