The body of a baby has been exhumed and reburied after his parents discovered his brain had been kept by a hospital without their consent.

Today the baby's mother, Christine White, of the Green, Tangmere, said she felt she had wasted three years tending to the grave of her son Charlie, who was eight months old when he died in 1998.

She told The Argus: "This has knocked me back worse than his death because at least we expected that and were prepared for it."

Special permission from the Home Office and the Bishop of Chichester was needed to exhume the body of Charlie from a cemetery at Chichester.

He was reburied on September 11 in a new coffin during a service conducted by the clergyman who was in charge of the original burial and who had christened Charlie.

Miss White began making enquiries about Charlie after national publicity over the retention of children's organs at the Alder Hay hospital in Liverpool.

She later rang a helpline set up at London's famous Great Ormond Street Hospital where Charlie's body was taken for a post-mortem examination.

Her GP helped take her case up and she was horrified to discover that Charlie's brain had been retained without consulting her or the baby's father, David Beasley.

Charlie was born in September 1997 with a cleft palate, a small jaw and developed severe breathing problems.

He died in June 1998 and in November of that year a verdict of accidental death was recorded at an inquest which heard how Charlie died shortly after a tracheotomy tube became blocked while he was in St Richard's Hospital at Chichester.

Medics successfully revived him but his condition was so severe that he was released into the care of his parents and he later died at home in the arms of his mother.

Miss White said: "I'm not trying to have a go at anyone. I just want people to know that this sort of thing is happening.

"I feel I have wasted three years sitting at my son's graveside but he was never really there.

"I feel a little bit more peaceful when I go to the cemetery now but I am still on a cocktail of drugs to keep me calm."

Miss White, 38, said she and Charlie's father were united in now considering taking legal action against Great Ormond Street.

She said: "This was the hardest thing his father and I have had to do and it was really dreadful".

In a statement today, Great Ormond Street Hospital said: "As a trust we are truly sorry that in the past parents were not fully informed about what was happening and deeply regret any anxiety or distress this has caused".

The hospital said that it had since changed its policies to ensure that nothing like this could happen again.

The statement says: "Post-mortems are essential to understanding why a particular child died to improve treatment in the future."

Following the Alder Hey scandal, The Argus reported how four Sussex hospitals had stored more than 200 patients' organs without relatives knowing.

Worthing Hospital, the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, Eastbourne District General Hospital and St Richard's Hospital received hundreds of inquiries from worried families.

The families of patients affected nationally have started legal proceedings in a bid for compensation.