A DAY-old baby weighing little more than a pound was transferred to a hospital 60 miles away -- because there was no bed for her in Bolton.

Shannon Lee Carson was born prematurely weighing 1lb 4oz after mum Kimberley went into labour 24 weeks into her pregnancy.

But there was no intensive care cot room for her at the Royal Bolton Hospital and she had to be taken to Stoke. Her mother Kimberley will now have to travel down to the Midlands to be with her daughter for a few precious hours on Christmas Day.

Shannon is so ill in the intensive care unit at Stoke City General Hospital that Kimberley has not yet held her first daughter, who was born on December 4.

Now all 17-year-old Kimberley can do is make the two-hour round trip to Stoke to sit for hours watching her baby wired up to machinery. Shannon should have been born in March but Kimberley was rushed to hospital after starting to have contractions at mum Vera's home in Priory Place, Tonge Moor.

Kimberley, who lives with her sister in Tonge Moor Road, Bolton, said: "I was very scared when Shannon Lee was born because I didn't think she was going to live. When she was first born she was totally dependent on machines and she looked so tiny and helpless. At one point she was so poorly that a priest came and baptised her in case she didn't make it."

The news that Shannon would have to be moved came when she was a day old. "The staff on the delivery suite at Bolton were great and the midwife on the ward talked to me a lot when I was upset," said Kimberley

"But then I was told they didn't have enough staff at Bolton so Shannon had to be moved to Stoke. I was upset because I feel like she is so far away from me.

"I am managing to see her every other day by getting lifts from my dad and sister but I want to be with her all the time."

Kimberley was offered a room at the hospital but after talking to her family she decided to go home to be cared for and supported through her ordeal by her family.

Her father, Alan, and sister Angela, take her every other day to see her daughter.

"On Christmas Day we will go and see her. I obviously want to be with her at Christmas time because she is my little girl," she said.

"People have bought Shannon lots of toys but all the clothes we bought her are too big at the moment. I just don't know what to get her for Christmas but what I really want is for her to be well and I'm just praying for her every night."

Kimberley intends to take Shannon back to Royal Bolton Hospital to show the staff who helped deliver her when she is released from hospital.

A spokesman for the Royal Bolton Hospital said when Shannon was born staff realised she would need "several weeks" of nursing in an intensive care cot.

The spokesman said: "We have three such cots here but tend to use them for babies who need them for a short period. It is quite normal for us to transfer babies who need longer term intensive care to a specialist centre where there is a greater number of these cots."

She said the hospital would usually be able to find places for babies within the region at St Mary's in Manchester, Salford's Hope Hospital, or at Liverpool.

"However on this particular occasion although our staff did try to find a place as near to Bolton as possible, the nearest was in Stoke, which has 10 intensive care cots.

"We do appreciate that it can cause difficulties for families when the baby is not being nursed near to home.

"However the baby is carefully monitored and nursed during the transfer and the parents are offered the opportunity to travel to the receiving hospital.

"Once a baby is well enough not to need intensive care, he or she can be transferred back to our own neo-natal unit and we hope that this little baby can come back here to Bolton before too long.