His birth was a miracle doctors said would never happen. But little Jake is oblivious to the wonder of it all.

Sandy Cundy was told she would never have another child after treatment for breast cancer left her infertile.

Diagnosed at the age of 32, Sandy had a form of cancer so virulent there was no time to consider how the cure might damage her body.

After she had the tumour removed, a cocktail of toxins was pumped into her bloodstream to kill any remaining cancerous cells.

The powerful chemotherapy saved her - but destroyed her hopes of a baby brother or sister for her son Luke, six.

Four years later, Sandy has baffled fertility specialists by giving birth to a healthy baby boy.

Sandy, of Water Lane, Angmering, said: "Having Jake has been like a miracle that came out of that terrible time of being ill and not knowing whether I would make it."

Jake was born at Worthing Hospital.

Sandy and her partner, Mark Wincell, were almost turned away from the maternity ward because there was no room for them.

But Jake's birth was as easy as his conception was extraordinary - within 35 minutes of arriving at the hospital, Sandy, 36, was holding him in her arms.

Sandy said: "I am starting to get used to having Jake around now, but it still feels strange.

"Even throughout my pregnancy I couldn't quite believe it. It was only when I saw him for the first time that I knew it was really true."

Sandy's eldest son Luke was 18 months old when she found a lump in her breast as she was taking a shower.

She said: "I knew straight away I should go to the doctor but I thought it would be a blocked milk duct or something because I had only been breast feeding a year before.

"I thought, I'm only 32, it's not likely to be cancer. Even when I went to the doctor he said he was 99 per cent sure there was nothing wrong but he sent me to the breast care unit at Worthing to be sure."

Less than three weeks later, Sandy was recovering from an operation to remove the tumour.

She said: "I know in some places, you have to wait three or four months for an operation. That would have been too late for me."

One day after she was first seen at the unit, Sandy received a call urging her to come to the hospital right away. When she told the caller she was at work, she was told: "It doesn't matter. Come now."

Civil servant Sandy was told she had a particularly aggressive form of cancer and needed treatment straight away.

She said: "That was when I knew I could die. It was horrible. When they told me it was cancer, the first thing I thought was that I might not live to see Luke go to school."

Although Sandy was told after the lumpectomy that the cancer had not spread, the doctors warned her that her treatment would have to be aggressive to beat the disease.

When Sandy asked her oncologist if the chemotherapy could make her infertile, he admitted there was a relatively high chance.

But there was no time for the month-long process of having eggs put aside.

Sandy's relationship with Luke's dad didn't survive the ordeal of her battle with cancer.

But she managed to struggle through the terrible days of feeling sick and losing her hair as a single mum, fighting to hold down her job in financial administration.

Two years after she was first told she had cancer, medics confirmed what Sandy had feared. She went to see a specialist and took a blood test which showed she was going through the menopause.

Despite her disappointment, Sandy tried to go on as before. She told herself that surviving was the most important thing and that she already had one child.

But by now she had met Mark, who works at a security firm in Hove. Sandy knew he wanted children of his own and over the next two years she regularly went for tests. Each one confirmed her fears.

Her last visit to the fertility specialist was just a few weeks before she found another lump in her breast in February this year.

"I was too scared to go to the doctor right away," she said.

But instead of being told she had cancer again, Sandy was told she was seven weeks pregnant.

She said: "The woman who did the scanning said he was a miracle baby but it was only when Jake was finally born that I allowed myself to believe it was really true - he is a little miracle."