TRANSPLANT patient Liz Beaton yesterday held the baby for which she risked her life.

Mrs Beaton, 29, made the brave decision last Christmas to stop taking anti-rejection medication for the sake of her unborn baby.

Having suffered five miscarriages and two failed attempts at fertility treatment, Mrs Beaton and her husband, Colin, were desperate for a child.

Mrs Beaton was prepared to gamble with her own life to make sure it was successful.

She stopped taking the anti-rejection drug azathioprine, which she had been using since her liver transplant in 1995.

Concerned doctors warned that without it she faced losing the donor organ and ultimately her life.

As she cradled their baby boy, Garrett Ayden Beaton, who was born on Saturday, Mrs Beaton said: "All I wanted was a family and now I have my little boy he was worth the risk to my own health.

"He is a little bit small because he was born six weeks prematurely, but he is absolutely beautiful.

"Looking at Garrett now, there is no doubt in my mind that they were risks worth taking."

The baby was born by emergency Caesarean section at James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough. He weighed three and a half pounds.

After less than 48 hours in an incubator in the hospital's neonatal unit, little Garrett was reunited with his proud mother on her hospital ward.

The family plan to return home to Hamsterley Colliery, County Durham, soon.