LITTLE Michaela Ashworth still wakes up every day with a smile on her face — despite needing surgery to correct a rare life-threatening heart defect.

Doctors discovered eight-month-old Michaela’s problem during a scan about three weeks before she was born.

Now her parents, David Ashworth and Laura Wild, of Westway, Hall i’th’ Wood, have to take her for regular visits to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool for specialist treatment.

Miss Wild, aged 26, said: “It affects more or less every part of our lives, but we get on with it.

“It’s hard at times, but we’ve got family support and great friends, and they’re a big help.”

Michaela was born with an atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD), a condition which means her heart effectively has only two chambers instead of the normal four.

While AVSD is serious enough on its own, Michaela has a particularly rare variant which means her heart is on the right-hand side of her chest and the wrong way round. The condition means her blood is not pumped efficiently, which makes her skin appear grey and the ends of her fingers and toes purple.

She has undergone long stays in intensive care on a life support machine, and has to be fed every three hours through a pipe which is surgically fed directly into her stomach.

Michaela will undergo surgery on March 31 to swap over the main blood vessels which connect to her heart, an operation which carries an 80 per cent chance of survival. But, despite the odds, mum Laura remains optimistic.

She said: “If she’d had the operation last year, when she first went into hospital, her chances of survival would have been 10 per cent, so she’s got through the worst of it. Considering everything she’s been through, she’s still a happy little baby.

“You never see her crying, and she’s always got a smile on her face.

“The first thing she does when she opens her eyes is smile, and there’s really nothing more I could ask for.”

Mr Ashworth, aged 28, said: “When she grows up we hope she will lead some kind of normal life.

“The doctors didn’t expect her to be here now, but she fought it and she’s still here.”

Now Michaela’s family and friends are rallying around her to raise money for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital on her behalf.

Vera Bragg, treasurer at the Derby Ward Labour Club, is organising a music and cabaret night at the venue on March 26. Tickets are £5, and the money will go to Alder Hey’s Ronald McDonald house, a place where families can stay while their children are in hospital.

And on March 20, Mr Ashworth, a supervisor for Maytree Travel, will lead a team of 12 people pulling a single decker bus on a sponsored one-mile circuit around the centre of Bolton.

julian.thorpe@ theboltonnews.co.uk