AMY Newton 28, and husband Michael, 30, began trying for a baby in 2010 about a year after they got married.
But things did not go to plan and Amy suffered five miscarriages in the space of a year.
Last November Amy discovered she was pregnant again but, just days later, was hit with news which she feared could rule out her chances of becoming a mum altogether.
She said: "I'd just had a smear in November last year, and three days later I found out I was pregnant again.
"But then the smear results came back and said there was a significant change in my cells, and that I needed to go for a colposcopy which is an internal exam.
"I just thought 'now I'm not going to be able to keep this baby, either'. I was eight weeks pregnant by this stage and I was scared.
"Then we got the worst news after the examination, which was that I had cervical cancer.
"I was nine weeks pregnant. Initially I was told I had to terminate the pregnancy and treat my cancer. We had got so far this time and now we were losing our chance again. It was devastating."
But Mrs Newton's consultant at the City Hospital offered hope.
She added: "A week after I found out about the cancer we had another appointment with our consultant who told us he thought he could operate on me while I was pregnant."
In a first for Nottingham's hospitals, Mrs Newton was operated on when she was 13 weeks pregnant, in January this year. Her consultant told her that he had never carried out the operation on a pregnant woman and that he had only heard of it happening to two other women in the UK.
She spent a week in hospital. where she was monitored very closely. She added: "I left the hospital with the hope that my baby would survive and knowing how rare the operation was. I was told all the cancer had been removed and it hadn't affected the baby. But the doctors had removed a lot of my cervix so there was a very real chance that my body might not be able to support the baby."
Mrs Newton said the following months were the most nerve-wracking of her life.
She said: "We never let ourselves believe that our baby would survive, until she was born on July 18. We called her Ruby.
"She is our little miracle, an absolute miracle and we think our consultant is an absolute god.
"The pregnancy was the most stressful time of both our lives but I feel so very lucky to have my daughter now. She's perfect. We're so lucky."
Mr Jafaru Abu, consultant gynaecological oncologist at the City Hospital, carried out the operation on Mrs Newton. He said it was an extremely difficult procedure.
Mr Abu said: "Essentially Amy's case was very unique. I put the options to her initially which were to carry out a radical hysterectomy, removing the whole uterus and the neck of the womb, terminating the pregnancy too.
"But then I went away and did a review of similar cases and found the operation had been performed on a pregnant woman twice before without terminating the pregnancy, once in Liverpool.
"I told Amy there would be a 50/50 chance that the baby would live. She decided to take the risk. I removed the neck of the womb and used keyhole surgery to remove the lymph gland in the pelvis. It was very challenging and nerve-wracking but went smoothly."
He added: "When I tell my colleagues about the operation they are all amazed. But now I've done it once, I think I would do it again."
Mrs Newton said that after going through what she had she wanted to encourage as many young women as possible to go for smear tests.
"I want to tell all young women to go and have a smear. If I hadn't had them, I wouldn't have known about my cancer and I wouldn't have Ruby. For a two-minute smear, it is all worth it, because often cervical cancer has no symptoms. It is very important that young women get smear tests – very, very important."
