BABY Maesie-Claire sits happily with her parents little knowing the drama since her birth just two months ago.
Michaela Cotterill had enjoyed a "perfect" pregnancy until the 34th week when she began suffering from breathing problems and coughing up blood.
Hospital staff began treating her for suspected blood clots.
She believes her daughter knew somethi
ng was wrong and decided to come into the world three weeks prematurely, weighing a healthy 6lb 5oz.
But her 20-year-old mother, who was wired up to monitors throughout her labour, was in no state to celebrate as her breathing difficulties worsened. Doctors told her they suspected she had pneumonia but her condition continued to deteriorate and nearly three weeks after her daughter's birth she was sent for detailed scans.
"Two hours later they told me I had cancer," she said.
Doctors discovered she had dozens of tumours on her lungs with a cancer which affects just one in 50,000 pregnant women.
By now on oxygen, she was rushed by ambulance from the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough to the Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield, which treats cases of the condition in the North of England, Midlands and North Wales.
The cancer, known as postpartum choriocarcinoma, is diagnosed using a simple test on levels of a pregnancy hormone in the blood. Normally this stands at six and most cases of the cancer have a reading in the thousands but Michaela's was off the scale at three million.
Specialists in Sheffield gave her intensive chemotherapy to target secondary tumours on her lungs but remained very concerned about her condition as she lay on the brink of respiratory failure.
She was transferred to the high dependency unit at the Northern General Hospital where her boyfriend Philip Day, 20, waiting anxiously by her bedside, was warned she might not pull through.
The last-ditch treatment worked. Her condition stabilised and she began responding to the cocktail of chemotherapy drugs remarkably quickly.
Just two weeks after those four days as she lay critically ill over the Easter weekend, she was able to return home to Billingham, on Teesside.
She was also reunited with Maesie-Claire after three weeks which she cannot remember. The youngster has not left her side since and has joined her mother on several return trips the 100 miles to Sheffield for more chemotherapy.
"It's only been the last three-and-a-half weeks I've been bonded with her. I cannot leave her at all now," she said.
"When I saw her again I couldn't believe how much she had grown. It was amazing.
"It's the best time now bonding with her. I wouldn't have it any other way – having her and being like I am than not having her."
Her hormone readings have dropped as quickly as they rose and she hopes she will need only two more chemotherapy cycles. As well as losing all her hair, she shed two stone in weight to barely seven stone although she is now putting weight back on.
The cancer can be passed on to babies in the womb but Maesie-Claire is free of the illness. Her mother will need lifelong checks to make sure the condition does not return but has been told she can have more children.
She paid tribute to staff who treated her in Sheffield in a team led by specialist Prof Barry Hancock. "They've been brilliant – if it hadn't been for them, I wouldn't be here."
Prof Hancock, who is a world authority on the condition, said around 600 cases in its early stages occurred each year in the region but only one or two cases developed like Michaela's. Hers was among the most serious he had treated in 20 years.
"She's a real star," he added. "She has responded super-well to treatment."
