Six hours after he was born at Maidstone Hospital on January 2 last year, Harry turned blue and was rushed to the special care baby unit where his parents, Penny Woods and Chris Mosdell, were told it was his heart.

The family were transferred to Royal Brompton Hospital in London where Harry was diagnosed with transposition of the great arteries – which means the arteries in the heart are the wrong way round.

The family were sent to Great Ormond Street for a day as doctors feared Harry could have brain damage because he had started to suffer from seizures.

They were told he had some damage, believed to have occurred in the first six hours when he didn’t have oxygenated blood in his body.

It was explained that the next 24 hours would be crucial as Harry had also developed septicemia.

Penny, 24, said: “It was meant to be the whole fairytale of having a new baby and bringing it home. We never imagined we would have to go through all that.

“It wasn’t nice watching a baby be so ill and not be able to do anything about it.”

In February this year, Harry was strong enough to have the corrective arterial switch surgery – eight-and-a-half hours of heart bypass surgery.

Penny and Chris had been told Harry would need to be kept in for a minimum of four weeks after the operation.

The family were home in five days.

It is now four months since Harry had his open heart surgery, and Penny and Chris are over the moon at the progress he has made.

Penny said: “He’s just doing brilliantly now. He has so much more energy to do things and he’s doing things he hasn’t ever done before.

“I don’t think Chris or me would have been able to get through what he has, the way he has.”

For more on this story, see this week's Sheerness Times Guardian