Excerpt stripping pictures

I have page children that I want to list as titles along with excerpts on the parent page. I have done it almost successfully with the following code coming after the <?php the_content(”); ?> on the parent page.

The problem is the code ending in <? the_excerpt(); ?> is stripping the picture I have in the child page. Each child page has a picture from the attached gallery in the content before the <!– more –> tag. How can I change this code so that picture is included instead of stripped out?
thanks
JSC

<? $pageChildren = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_parent = ".$post->ID."	AND post_type = 'page' ORDER BY menu_order", 'OBJECT');	?>
<? if ( $pageChildren ) : foreach ( $pageChildren as $pageChild ) : setup_postdata( $pageChild ); ?>
<h2 class="subpagetitle"><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($pageChild->ID); ?>"><?php echo $pageChild->post_title; ?></a></h2>
<? the_excerpt(); ?>
<? endforeach; endif; ?>