"we are going to have the best Christmas ever," say the parents of a five-month-old girl from Dublin who became the youngest ever recipient of a transplanted organ when she was just five days old.
Mr Jurgen Schuttke, who is from Germany, and his wife, Ita, live in Clontarf, Dublin. They appeared at a press conference yesterday at King's College Hospital in London with their daughter, Baebhen, and her elder sister, Ava (5), to thank the surgeons who performed a delicate six-hour liver transplant operation on Baebhen when she was five days old.
Cradling her daughter in her arms, Mrs Schuttke smiled broadly and said she and her family would be "for ever grateful" to the surgeons at King's College.
"We can't believe it. We are so delighted and overwhelmed by the whole brilliant and miraculous outcome that has occurred. Baebhen has a very lively temper. She is a very happy baby who loves attention . . . She is perfectly healthy," she added.
When Baebhen was born in Dublin in July she quickly developed liver failure. At just two days she was diagnosed as having neonatal haemochromatosis, also known as bronzed diabetes, a disease which killed her two older brothers, Lucas and Reuben. However, a chance discovery on the Internet led the uttke's Schuttkes to King's College, where Dr Mohamed Rela was developing new techniques in liver transplant surgery and the family was flown by air ambulance to London.
"If we hadn't used the Net I don't think we would have found King's. We could have had another dead baby," Mr Schuttke said.
Three days after Baebhen's arrival in London the family of a 10-year-old boy who had died in an accident donated his liver. However, because the liver was too large to transplant into a new-born baby the surgeons reduced it to one-eighth its size.
Speaking at the press conference yesterday, Dr Rela said Baebhen's condition was "very rare", but that advances in research into liver disease at the hospital had "permitted this breakthrough in treatment". Explaining the technique used in the transplant, Dr Rela said the eight segments of the liver were able to perform independently, and surgeons at King's College had discovered they needed to transplant only one segment into a new-born baby.
Surgeons at the hospital have performed 13 liver transplants in children under three months.
"This is the youngest child to get a liver transplant because she was lucky enough to get a donor. She has done very well, and the liver is now adapting to her body and is growing normally. She will not need another transplant when she's older," Dr Rela said.
Surgeons have already used the new technique on 13 children under three months old. At this age their immune systems have not fully developed, so the organ rejection common in older patients is less likely.
Dublin baby world's youngest transplant patient: page 9