BBC Breakfast’s Nina Warhurst shares poignant video of her dad and newborn daughter amid dementia battle

BBC presenter Nina Warhurst shared a series of emotional posts on social media yesterday, including a poignant video of her dad Chris holding her six-week-old daughter Nancy. 

Chris was diagnosed with mixed dementia, which is Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, in 2022. 

Since then, Nina, 42, has shared regular updates about her dad’s dementia battle on social media, sadly revealing that there have been times where “he couldn’t quite place [her].”

However, the BBC Breakfast presenter and her family have done their best to adapt to Chris’ dementia. 

Nina explained to BBC Radio 5 Live: “What’s been an eye-opener for us is that once we’ve shifted to adapt it into our lives, you can have happy times again.

“So you’re learning to live alongside it and yes, you feel like you’re standing on shifting sand quite a lot, but you can have those lovely times.”

“Those connections remain [but] you are in many ways saying goodbye to someone very incrementally and that’s hard,” she added.

The family are finding those happy moments wherever they can and undoubtedly having a newborn baby at home has brought a lot of joy into the house.

Nina gave birth to her third child, a daughter named Nancy, with her husband Ted at the beginning of July.

The couple are also parents to two boys, Digby and Michael.

Nina has shared plenty of updates about life with a newborn, including a very a sweet video to her Instagram story. 

In the video, Chris is cradling his granddaughter and soothing her with his voice while sitting in a rocking chair. 

Nina poignantly wrote “still got it” alongside the video and tagged another page called Dementia Adventures, which chronicles their family’s journey with Chris. 

Nina uploaded a longer video of Chris and Nancy on this page where he and Nina sang You Are My Sunshine to the sleeping baby. 

“Here’s dad with his newest grandchild,” Nina wrote alongside the video. “Hand a baby to anyone who’s ever held a baby, and instinct kicks in, and they know just what to do.”

She went on to explain that babies and children are a fantastic tonic for people suffering from dementia. 

Happily, Nina, Chris, and Nancy were soon joined by more family members.

Nina gathered with her sisters and nieces for a family photo. They surrounded Chris and blew him kisses as he held baby Nancy.

“When you wanted a squad of lads, but Ma Nature had other plans,” Nina captioned the picture.