HAPPY, healthy and perfectly content, 10-week-old William Cliffe Redford is the baby who might never have been born.

Because his mum Sally's blood group is rhesus negative, the antibodies in her blood treat the foetus as an infection and start to fight it, destroying its red blood cells.

Six years earlier, when Sally, of Windsor Drive, Grappenhall, gave birth to her first son, Luke, she was given an injection which has only a one in 1,000 rate of failure to prevent her body attacking a second baby.

But when Sally became pregnant for a second time, with partner, Mark Redford, she and baby William became that one in one thousand when the antibodies in her blood started attacking the baby.

And so, at 26 weeks pregnant in Liverpool Women's Hospital , the first of three blood transfusions was made directly through her womb and into William's tiny liver.

She was induced at 34 weeks and William was taken into the special care unit where he received a full blood transfusion before being transferred to Warrington.

And now, at 10-weeks-old, William is a healthy baby boy.

Sally said: "I just want to give hope to other mums who are rhesus negative. There isn't usually a problem with the first child and the injection is supposed to prevent the antibodies attacking the baby's red blood cells a second time.

"Even though it didn't work for us, advances in technology meant that a blood transfusion could be made directly through the womb into the foetus."

Proud dad, Mark, said: "William really is a miracle baby because he and Sally became that one in one thousand."