Mum saved my life and now against the odds I've had my own miracle baby

EVERY year, grateful Jessica Chriss celebrates two birthdays.

- TIFFANY WALLIS

The extra one is for what she calls her “bonus life” – the day her mum went under the knife in one of the first operations of its kind, to give her dying daughter half of her liver.

Jessica, just six at the time, had been born with biliary atresia, a condition that stops bile flowing to her gut.

Even before she was born her mum and dad, Kim Thurloway and Simon Turpitt, had been told she had the condition – and that it was potentially fatal.

An early childhood photo of her paddling with her dad, in John Lennon sun glasses and a baseball cap, shows her with a distended tummy.

At three she had surgery to try to ease the blockage in her liver’s bile ducts.

But by five she had become “stick thin”, her skin turning yellow from jaundice as waste products built up in her blood.

As her energy drained away, Jessica was put on the list for a liver transplant – but Kim and Simon were warned donors were few and far between.

Jess, now 30, says: “My family were told to prepare for the worst.

“I could barely eat, and I was so yellow due to the jaundice that, when I went out, people would stop and stare.” After a year of hoping for a donor, Jess’s parents were ready to do anything that would save their daughter’s life.

Kim, a former HR manager of Crawley, West Sussex, had heard that a piece of liver could be transplanted from a living donor. The surgery was still in its infancy, but she put herself forward.

Jess says: “The consultants tried to dissuade her as it was so risky she could die. But after having tests, she decided to go ahead. I’m so thankful she did. I was six, and I was nearly out of time. My knees and tummy were swollen and I was yellow. I struggled with school and I couldn’t run around like the other kids.

“A few family members had been tested to see if they were a match – and luckily my mum was.

“Mum risked her life to save me and I wouldn’t be here today without her.”