Joanne Morrell was offered the chance of an abortion when she was told her baby had serious heart defects. Four years on, she knows she made the right choice.

Little Amy Morrell will be eating plenty of cake and ice cream this Christmas.

For the first few years of her life, she struggled to eat much at all, often looked deathly pale and had almost no energy.

This was because she was born with serious heart defects which gave her, at best, only a 50-50 chance of survival.

Her parents, Joanne and James Morrell, of St Nicholas Road, Brighton, lived in the shadow of knowing every Christmas could be her last.

Amy underwent crucial, pioneering and potentially hazardous heart surgery earlier this year.

But since she became one of the first children in the world to receive the new treatment, she has gone from strength to strength.

For the first time, her family has been assured she is out of danger.

Amy was born with a condition which meant the main pumping chamber of her heart and the main blood vessel feeding blood around her body were too small.

This was spotted during a scan at the Royal Sussex County Hospital when Joanne was 20 weeks' pregnant, in summer 1998.

At first radiographers thought Amy was lying awkwardly in the womb, obscuring a proper view of her heart.

A further scan at Guy's Hospital in London, however, revealed the defects.

Joanne, 37, and James, 36, were given the option of a termination.

Joanne said: "I had seen her sucking her thumb on the scan. I couldn't get rid of her. We wanted to give her a chance of life.

"It was a terrible choice to be given, though. We were told our daughter would have to be operated on from birth and, even if she survived, she would only have a 50-50 chance."

The couple were fortunate Amy's heart problems were spotted so early.

Joanne has heard of other cases where babies are born appearing to be perfectly healthy. But the heart defects can cause a vital duct supplying blood around the body to close, meaning the baby dies within days.

Because doctors were aware of Amy's condition, drugs kept the duct open until she was operated on four days after her birth in November 1998.

She was not allowed home for the first six weeks and had to have an MRI scan after two months.

At six months she had to have a thin plastic catheter inserted into an artery.

The process subjected her to a lot of potentially harmful X-rays.

When she was first discharged from hospital her oxygen levels were running at about 70 per cent, compared to a normal human average of 96 per cent.

Her immune system was also very weak.

Joanne said: "Even a simple cold could be very dangerous. She often looked quite blue and pale. She couldn't really run or keep up with other children playing games.

"I felt the one thing I could do to help her was to get her eating well. But feeding her was very difficult. She was very small and would not put on any weight at all."

Gradually Amy started keeping her food down better and has developed a taste for kiwi fruit, white chocolate, cakes and ice cream.

A huge breakthrough came in August when she was treated using new XMR equipment at Guy's Hospital.

It uses much less radiation than other scans and gives doctors a three-dimensional image of the heart and a clearer look at how blood is being pumped.

Amy was one of the first 12 children in the world to trial the XMR treatment, which told doctors she was suitable for a third heart operation, which took place in October.

Until then, Amy had been subjected to regular MRI scans and echo cardiograms, involving intense use of radiation rays.

Without the new diagnostic system, she would have had to have another thin plastic catheter inserted into an artery or vein and guided by X-rays.

Joanne said: "When your child is so ill, you're just happy they are being treated.

"You don't think about the amount of X-rays they are receiving. It is only now that I have started to think about it more. I'm so thankful she avoided having such a big exposure in her latest treatment."

It took a week after the open heart surgery for doctors to be sure Amy had come through successfully.

She is now back at home, with her brothers, six-year-old Jack and William, two. She loves singing and watching her favourite TV show, The Tweenies.

Joanne said: "She is so bubbly, very full of life. She is a determined little girl - she has to be, to have come through so much."

Amy still needs regular check-ups at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children in Brighton.

Joanne said: "Sometimes she doesn't pace herself properly - she will run around because she has so much energy, then just flake out.

"But she does not let her heart condition stop her. She's happy to swing from the monkey bars in the park or go on little roller-coasters - almost giving the rest of us heart attacks."

This year, the family's Christmas celebrations will be extra special.

Joanne said: "We came so close to losing her. This will be the first Christmas where she will have a lot more energy to enjoy it - which means we will all enjoy it more as a family."