WITH her light brown hair and cheeky smile, Khloe McInally looks like any healthy baby.

But to her proud parents Laura and Kevin, and big sister Kara, six, she is their “born fighter”.

At just six hours old doctors faced a race against time to save her - when a rare anomaly meant her first breath failed to open her lungs, leaving them filled with fluid instead of air.

Despite this, Khloe, who weighed a healthy 7lb 6oz, scored top marks at birth in the Apgar test, which medics use to assess a baby’s pulse, reaction and breathing.

But her blood had continued to circulate as it did in her mother’s womb, causing too much blood to bypass the lungs. This put deadly strain on her heart and left her whole body lacking in oxygen.

The condition, persistent pulmonary hypertension in newborns (PPHN), baffled doctors at University Hospital Wishaw, where she arrived two weeks late on March 7, and she was rushed to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow for specialist care.

Khloe, who also had a hole in her heart, spent the next week sedated and hooked up to full life-support as medics battled to keep her alive. 

Mrs McInally, 33, from Motherwell, said: “We just thought ‘how can this be happening?’. She did the big cry when she was born, I got skin to skin straight away and she did all the things a typical baby does. There was no concern.

“But they basically said she didn’t take a big enough breath when she was born to inflate her lungs; all those capillaries in her lungs didn’t fully open. We were just in complete shock.”

Mrs McInally had enjoyed six hours of cuddling and feeding her baby in hospital and was expecting to get to take her home, when Khloe’s vomit became “streaked with blood” and her oxygen levels dropped. 

Staff at Wishaw managed to stabilise her condition by giving her oxygen for the next few hours.

But as Mrs McInally, who needed help to deliver Khloe when she became “stuck” after two days of induced labour, was having her blood pressure checked, she was told a specialist transport team was on its way to take her baby to Glasgow.

She said: “It was 4am and I was just distraught. They said her heart was enlarged on one side because it was working so hard to pump what little oxygen it could round the body and there was a high pressure on her lungs. 

“My husband was at home and I was just in tears telling him [over the phone]. Then they took me through to see her and she was fully ventilated and sedated.”

Mrs McInally, an engineering team manager, was so petrified her baby would die she refused to wash a tiny mit Khloe was sick on until the day she brought her home. 

She said: “It smelled of baby milk and it was the only thing I had with her smell on it. I was terrified that if anything happened I wouldn’t have anything.

“I didn’t find out until later - it was my husband who heard after I had turned away - but the consultant told the ambulance driver to get the blue lights on and get her there as quickly as possible.”

As soon as Khloe arrived at Glasgow doctors diagnosed PPHN and warned her parents that her condition was critical.

Mrs McInally said: “She was almost in a coma and every six hours they [nurses] would turn her to stop her getting bedsores. They just wanted her body to rest. I wasn’t even allowed to stroke her, the only thing I could do was put my hand on her. 

“You just felt so helpless, watching your baby suffering and you cannot do a single thing about it, apart from sit next to her talking and telling her stories, hoping she will be strong enough to fight it off.”

Medics even carried out scans on Khloe’s brain to rule out any neurological issues when she failed to show signs of improvement.

But after a week on a ventilator in the neonatal intensive care unit receiving a variety of oxygen and gas to expand the blood vessels and inflate her lungs, her circulation began to flow normally.

Khloe finally came off the ventilator on Mother’s Day - after the breathing tube came out while she was in the arms of Mrs McInally.

She was then transferred back to Wishaw to be closer to home and a week later she was home. 

Khloe has now been signed off as a healthy baby after doctors confirmed at her final check-up last week that the hole in her heart had also closed.

Mrs McInally said: “Now I wonder if the reason she was two weeks late was her wee body telling me she wasn’t ready to come out yet. Her saying - ‘my lungs are not ready yet to take that full breath’.

“But I can’t thank the staff enough for saving her life. She’s just like any typical six-month-old baby and is meeting all her milestones; she’s crawling and is pulling herself up holding onto my hands. 

“She was born a wee fighter.”