NINE-month-old Abbie Dark, from Melksham, has spent most of her life in hospital, with her parents only able to hope they can bring her home for her first birthday in April.

Parents Rob and Beth have been juggling visits to the Bristol Children's Hospital with caring for her older brothers, James, 12, Luke, nine and Bradley, five, since Abbie was born suffering from a rare congenital condition.

Despite all this the couple have still managed to raise over £2,000 for the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where their daughter has spent the past five months.

Abbie was born at the family's Craybourne Road home after a perfectly normal pregnancy with a growth the size of a tennis ball on her neck.

Mrs Dark, who had longed for a little girl to complete her family, said: "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."

Abbie was rushed to hospital where tests showed the lump was a cystic hygroma, a condition that affects about one in 6,000 babies in the UK.

In August she was admitted to the Children's Hospital, where she has been treated ever since, only returning home for a brief visit at Christmas.

Doctors operated to remove the growth, which was pressing on her internal organs, and her parents spent an anxious time at her bedside in intensive care while she recovered.

Mrs Dark said: "When I saw her I thought they had got her mixed up with someone else. She just didn't look like Abbie. Her eyes were all puffy and she couldn't move or breathe. It was absolutely horrible."

Abbie has recovered well from the operation but a tracheotomy procedure carried out to help her breathe means she has to remain in hospital.

The tracheotomy, where doctors cut a hole in the throat to make breathing easier, also means that she can't make any sounds even her cries are silent.

Mrs Dark said: "You can see she is crying, she makes all the motions, but there is just no noise. I can't remember what my baby's cry sounds like."

Some of the £2,390 raised by the Dark family has been used to buy a new piece of equipment at the hospital and the rest is going towards a new MRI scanner.

They are now looking forward to celebrating Abbie's birthday and hoping that she will finally be allowed to come home.

"I would love her to be home for her birthday but if she can't come home then we will take her birthday celebrations to her instead," her mother said.