[Pete.]

An Apprentice finalist has revealed that the agonising death of her baby son inspired her to change career and become a business leader.

Plymouth-based Charleine Wain, 31, from Neath, South Wales, left the Royal Navy to be closer to her family after her three-month-old son Caylan was lost to cot death in October 2007.



The agony of losing Caylan, who was born premature with his twin Ethan, was so terrible that Charleine confessed: 'If I didn't have my husband Scott, I think I would have cracked. I was so low and so rock bottom.'



'It was a really hard place to be in. It was really difficult.'

She said: 'If I could have continued to do the job without going to sea then maybe things would have been different, but there was not a chance I would leave the children.

'I knew I needed to focus on a new career path. I decided I wanted my own salon. For the first year I would work with the Navy Monday to Friday and then sneak off in my trainers to wash someone's hair.

'I see my hairdressing and hair salon as a representation of something so good coming off something so tragic and so bad. I just want to make it as successful as I can.'

'I always knew I wanted to do as well as I possibly could because amazing things can come as a result of terrible situations.

She opened Maiya's Hair, Beauty and Photography in November 2010, a year before leaving the navy.



Charleine told the Plymouth Herald: 'After I lost my little boy, I just wanted to be around people who didn't know me so I started hairdressing. I always knew I wanted to do as well as I possibly could.'

She also revealed the significance of a delicate dragonfly necklace she wears as a reminder of her son and to keep him close to her heart.

She said: 'My dragonfly necklace is the way that I carry my little boy around with me.'

Cot death is also known as sudden infant death syndrome and is the sudden, unexpected and unexplained death of an apparently healthy baby.

In the UK, just under 300 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly every year with most deaths happening during the first six months of life.

The loss of Caylan was so profound that it led Charleine and Scott to up-end their life. With the physical training instructor swapping the military for hairdressing so she could spend more time with husband Scott and her two children, Caylan's twin Ethan, their daughter Maia and her stepson Mathew.

The successful business woman rose from being a trainee to owning an award-winning salon - and is now in Lord Sugar's final five.

[Pete.]

Legend Charl

[Crimson Dynamo]

i hope she wins

[Vanessa]

[MB.]

[Lostie!]

How awful

[Jason.]

[Jake.]

that's really awful, she's a tough woman