A SCOTS woman who was at the centre of a swine flu life-or-death scare has given birth to a healthy baby boy.

And today proud mum Sharon Pentleton and her "wee miracle" were doing well at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock after she gave birth by caesarean section.

Her baby joy comes after Sharon, 27, was flown to Sweden for life-saving treatment after being struck down with swine flu when six months' pregnant.

A family friend said: "Sharon and her new son appear fit and well and the nurses are happy with things.

"There was some tension because of everything she's been through but the doctors were confident and everything has worked out."

Sharon, who lives in Saltcoats, North Ayrshire, with partner Brian Muirhead and their two-year-old daughter, told last month how she had been assured by medics her "wee miracle" was "active and growing fine".

Sharon's swine flu ordeal began when she went to Crosshouse Hospital with severe back pain and was initially treated for appendicitis. Shocked medics later discovered she had swine flu.

Shock family members were warned Sharon was so gravely ill the medical team were taking things "minute to minute" and even had to perform a tracheotomy to try to ease her breathing.

She needed a rare form of treatment where medics use a special ECMO machine to put oxygen into her blood outside her body.

The only UK unit that offers the treatment is in Leicester, and all five beds there were already full because of the swine flu epidemic.

Doctors were left with no choice but to send Sharon, who had slipped into a coma, to the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, which has one of the life-saving machines.

For two weeks she was hooked up to the machine before making a full recovery.

Sharon flew back to Scotland two months ago and she and her family have launched a campaign to raise £100,000 to buy the country's first dedicated ECMO machine.

"It frightens me how close I came to not being here at all," said Sharon of her illness.