Amazing Plymouth baby Grace Hambly is unaware of drama as she was born

THEY are the picture of a happy family – but little does baby Grace know of the ordeal her parents went through just days before her birth.

Dad Adam Hambly had a brush with death when his Subaru Impreza was involved in a head-on smash with a black Ford Focus in Lipson Road last November.

The 32-year-old survived the accident but suffered 20 breaks in his right leg and was trapped in the car for two hours as firefighters cut him from the wreckage.

Hearing the news of her husband's horrific smash, wife Jo, 35, went into labour nine weeks premature.

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Two months on from the ordeal, all three Hamblys are now back home and on the mend.

Unsurprisingly though, life has changed dramatically for Adam since his near fatal crash.

"Before the accident I was out of the house at 8am every morning and I wouldn't be back for 18 hours," the former machine operator. "Now I spend a lot of time on the sofa.

"I have to spend most of my waking hours with my leg elevated or else it swells up. If I do try to walk I can only take about 10 steps on my crutches before I have to stop."

Adam knows it will be a slow recovery. He will need at least three operations to begin to rectify his shattered leg – and it will be six months before he can walk unassisted.

But being at home has its benefits. "The bright side is that I get to spend so much time with Grace," the proud father said.

"She is absolutely amazing. I thank my lucky stars to have her and that she's so healthy – she's better than any painkiller the doctor could give me."

Even fatherhood has been impaired, however, because of the accident.

"It does bother me that I can't pick her up and walk around with her," he confessed. "But I'm looking forward to the day I can."

And then there are the concerns about not being able to support his new family.

"I'm self-employed," Adam said. "So it is tough being unable to work, but we're lucky that my wife has a good job to help us through. It's hard on her though because she's got her hands full with Grace and having to take care of me as well.

"By the time I've recovered I'll be in the worst financial situation I've ever been in. This is one of the most testing times of my life."

The new father is still hoping that there will be some closure to his case and is doing everything he can to help the police in their investigations and get to the bottom of what happened the night of the crash.

"We have quite a lot of witnesses already, thanks to The Herald's coverage, but we are still going around the immediate area doing door knocks and trying to find someone who might have seen something.

"Thanks to kind friends and family we've got about half a dozen statements but we are still after one more crucial witness.

"There was someone at the scene seconds after the crash happened and we'd like to get in contact with them."

Anyone with information about the incident, which occurred on November 17 at 7.30pm, can contact the police on 101 quoting log number 653.