An identical twin baby boy has lost both his legs and an arm after contracting meningitis.
Healthy Richard and Jayden Hunter went to bed as usual one night, but within hours, Richard was fighting for his life.
Medical staff were forced to amputate the 11-month-old's limbs in a desperate bid to save him.
His mother, Ashleigh Wilkinson has revealed her son's life or death battle with the killer disease to raise awareness of how quickly it strikes.
Richard has had to undergo numerous operations as a result of contracting meningococcal septicaemia in, an extremely severe form of meningitis.
He was rushed to Hospital in the early hours of as a tell-tale rash began to spread over his body and Ms Wilkinson,18, was told to brace herself for the worst.
She said: 'He was eating cake and was being his normal little self before we put him to bed.'
The young mother from had already been through an ordeal as Richard and Jayden were born three months premature and had been in and out of hospital with numerous chest infections.
She said: 'He was completely unrecognisable, he looked like he was black and blue because of the bad blood running through him.
She said: 'I woke up because he used to cry a lot through the night and he hadn't that night.
'I looked at him and saw loads of spots and I just started running around the house shouting.
'I could not stay calm at all. We were just trying to get him to stay awake.
'We thought he was teething so we had given him teething powder to help him before putting him down to bed.
Brave: Baby Richard hopes to be home in time for Christmas.
'It's a good thing I woke up when I did. I was hysterical, it was just so quick.
'If it had been during the day we would have noticed him getting worse and taken him to hospital straight way,' Ms Geul added.
'We had him and Jayden baptised and everybody just talked to him to help and we prayed. I have never prayed so much in my life,' said Ms Geul.
'They said if he survived he would probably need to get limbs amputated and I just told them to try anything to help him,' Ms Wilkinson said.
'If your baby has a temperature or any symptoms, take them to the doctor.
'If people can catch it early it might help
