A LITTLE girl celebrated her first birthday this week at her home in Melksham an event her parents thought she might only see from a hospital bed.

Abbie Dark spent most of her first 10 months in hospital after being born with a rare congenital defect that left her with a huge growth on her neck.

After a series of operations her parents, Rob and Beth, were finally allowed to take her home in February and this week family and friends celebrated with no less than three birthday parties.

Mrs Dark said: "We decided to have one party with all her friends on Thursday, another after school and then another one on Saturday for those who couldn't make it on Thursday."

The couple and their three sons, James, 12, Luke, nine, and five-year-old Bradley, are delighted the family is all together at last.

Mrs Dark said: "It is lovely having her home. The boys can't wait to get home from school to see her and then they fight over who gets to speak to her we have to have time slots!"

Nurses from the Bristol Children's Hospital, where Abbie was treated, are also planning to come and visit the family in the next few weeks.

Mrs Dark gave birth to her youngest child at the family's Craybourne Road home and was so delighted to have a little girl that she hardly noticed there was anything wrong.

"I felt like I wasn't really there. It all went over the top of my head at first I was just so pleased I had a daughter," she said.

Her baby was taken to hospital, where tests showed the lump was a cystic hygroma, a rare condition that affects about one in 6,000 babies in the UK.

Four months later she was admitted to the Bristol Children's Hospital, where she remained for the next six months, only going home for a few hours on Christmas day.

She underwent operations to remove the growth, which was pressing on her internal organs, and had to spend time in intensive care.

As a part of her treatment doctors had to carry out a tracheotomy, inserting a breathing tube in her throat, and she had to remain in hospital until this could be removed and she could breath on her own.

The little girl is now making rapid progress, although she still has to be partly fed through a tube into her stomach and has physiotherapy to help her catch up in her development.

Her family have since raised over £2,000 for the hospital's paediatric intensive care unit, some of which has already been used to buy much-needed new equipment.