A mother who collapsed and fell into a coma just 10 days after taking her newborn baby home, woke up a week later with no recollection that she had given birth, or even had a boyfriend.

Stevie Caffrey, 20, collapsed on the bathroom floor in Netherton, Merseyside, due to a rare heart condition last November.

Her heart and kidneys were shutting down due to a condition known as 'peripartum cardiomyopathy', which affects just one in 15,000 new mothers.

Doctors placed her in an induced coma for four weeks to help her recover, but when she awoke in mid-December she had no idea who her nearest and dearest were.

She said: 'I remember Andy sitting there holding my hand and he went out the room and I gestured to the nurse "who's that?".

'She said "It's your boyfriend". I thought "I haven't got a boyfriend" and she said my dad was coming with the baby. I thought "I haven't got a baby".'

Doctors had woken her from the coma to stop long-term memory loss setting in. At first Stevie experienced strange hallucinations and was unable to speak.

Thankfully her memory was jogged after a few days with Andy and her father Lyndon by her bedside and later that week she began communicating through writing and lip reading.

Maisie was born on November 5 last year but after just three days Lyndon, who works for Delta Taxis, and Andy became worried when Stevie started being sick.

When she collapsed at 2.30am on November 15, paramedics took her to Fazakerley Hospital.

After a blood test, she was rushed to Liverpool Women's hospital at 5am.

Andy said: 'They thought her appendix was ruptured. But then I was told to go out of the room because her heart had stopped. It did not seem real.'

Stevie was resuscitated, rushed to the Royal Liverpool Hospital and taken straight to the operating theatre.

Andy said he watched in disbelief as her body swelled up.

He said: 'She had eyes like a gecko. I almost broke down crying.'

Doctors referred Stevie to specialists at Wythenshawe Hospital, in Manchester, and she was taken there by a police escort.

Surgeons operated on her heart and put her on the list for a transplant, but unable to risk the wait, they put a ventricular assist system into the left side of her heart instead to help it function.

Stevie woke up in mid-December but it was another three months before she could return home to Maisie, who was being looked after by Andy's mum and Stevie's grandmother and aunt.

Stevie said: 'I was upset because I had not seen her for a long time.'

'Knowing other people were looking after her, I thought she was going to call Andy's mum Mummy.

'She is my baby - how was I going to feel if she called anyone else Mummy?'

Stevie finally left hospital three weeks ago. Doctors gave her a portable monitor that measures her heart rhythm and are hopeful she will remain stable and will not need a heart transplant for some time.

Andy said: 'It is up to her from now on. The doctors have done the most they could.'

The new mother, who is due to start a dance course at college, said: 'The last two months were horrible. I just wanted to come home. I did not think I would be here.'