Christian Constantine was born with the severest facial deformities his doctors had ever seen. Since a baby, he has been through more than 35 agonising operations to rebuild his features.

"I didn't know anything was wrong until Christian was born and I saw my doctor's eyes," she says. "Then they put me to sleep again immediately. I didn't see him for three days. Not until the nurses said, 'First we're going to show a Polaroid picture of baby to mummy.' That's when I insisted on actually seeing him. He was very wrong-looking indeed. But I felt love at first sight."

The doctors were mystified. The bones of Christian's face had stopped forming prematurely,

his eyes were too far apart and his eyebrows abnormally high, and a severe cleft lip and palate, leaving the roof of his mouth open and the top gum exposed.

the doctors were particularly concerned that the frontal lobe of his brain had been damaged by the cleft, which went up to his forehead.