Diane Blood has second baby

Diane Blood now has two sons

Diane Blood, the woman who fought to have a baby using her dead husband's sperm, has had a second child using the same method.

Joel Michael Blood, weighing 8lbs, was born on Wednesday morning at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.

Mrs Blood's father Mike McMahon told reporters: "She is overjoyed. It's what she wanted."

The baby was delivered by Caesarian section with Mrs Blood's mother Sheila in the room for support. Mother and baby were said to be doing well.

Mrs Blood, 36, already has a three-year-old son Liam by her husband Stephen, who died from bacterial meningitis in February 1995.

After he died, Mrs Blood waged a three-year battle to be allowed to conceive using his frozen sperm, collected while he was in a coma.

The law had said that she could not be inseminated because Mr Blood had not given written permission for his sperm to be used.

Mrs Blood, from Worksop, Nottinghamshire, conceived her second child after treatment at the same Belgian hospital where she had become pregnant with Liam.

'Unknown' father

It was one of the conditions of her court case that Mrs Blood leave Britain to have her treatment.

Mrs Blood is currently unable in law to register her husband as Liam's father - both children's birth certificates must show the father as "unknown".

A bill to record posthumous fathers on their baby's birth certificate was scuppered last year when a Tory MP blocked it in Parliament.

Mrs Blood's solicitors have since launched a challenge to this rule in the High Court under the Human Rights Act. The case is still pending.