THREE WEEKS before her baby was due, Sandy Pemberton went suddenly into premature labour. The hospital monitor showed there were problems with the unborn baby.

"It was my sixth child," says Sandy. "Unexpectedly, my body reacted strongly to the epidural injection I was given and my blood-pressure plummeted. At the same time the line on the baby's heart-beat monitor went virtually straight and then the heart-beat stopped altogether. Suddenly bells were ringing everywhere and I was rushed into the labour ward to remove the dead baby by emergency caesarean."

In desperation, Sandy's husband Jack began to pray and then remembered that it was the night when the all-night prayer team - drawn from many households in the Church - would be meeting at Palm Tree, a Jesus Fellowship community house. It was midnight when the message got through and immediately the team got to work, realising that according to the message the baby had already died and Sandy's life was in great danger.

"The first I knew of the miracle that followed," said Jack, "was seven minutes later, when a nurse hurried out of the theatre, pushed a bundle into my arms and then disappeared back into the theatre because the fight to save Sandy's life was still going on inside. The baby girl that she dropped into my arms was all messy - but very much alive!"

Looking back, Sandy remembers vividly shivering violently and feeling freezing cold as if her life were ebbing away from her, then suddenly becoming aware of an incredible strength coming into her and a cry rising inside: "I'm not going to die and I'm not going to lose this baby!"

After the nurse had carried the baby out to Jack, the theatre team fought through the night for Sandy. For the rest of the night her blood pressure virtually disappeared but by morning they came out and told Jack that the battle had been won.

Perhaps the most wonderful - and the most mystifying - aspect of the miracle only became apparent to Jack and Sandy when a nurse told them later: "I've never seen anything like it: when the afterbirth came away we saw that the umbilical cord was shrivelled up solid and doubled up like the root of a tree."

She shook her head and added:

"There's no way that cord could have supported life and judging by the state of it, the cord must have shrivelled long before Sandy went into labour."

This was confirmed later by Sandy's GP, who said that in his opinion because the placenta could not have been feeding the baby for some time, there was no chance naturally-speaking of the baby living and God had worked super-naturally. Sandy had no hesitation in telling the other mothers in the ward that she and her baby both owed their lives to a miracle from God.

Before the baby was born Jack had felt God telling him that the baby would be a girl and that Jack was to call her 'Grace'. After her amazing birth Jack realised why. And Grace herself - now 22 and an active member of the Jesus Fellowship in Northamptonshire - comments:

"It seems like I've known about the miracle at my birth all my life because it was such a big thing and my Dad talks about it often. I've always had a gratitude to God that He saved me and it gives me faith that God can change things and do the unbelievable."