He almost didn’t make it. When Mary McCartney gave birth in Liverpool’s Walton General Hospital on June 18, 1942, her baby wasn’t moving, and didn’t appear to be breathing.Paul was in a state of white asphyxia, caused by oxygen deficiency in the brain. The obstetrician was all set to pronounce him dead, but the midwife, a friend of Mary, held out hope. A Roman Catholic, like Mary, she began to pray. After a few seconds, the baby started to holler.At first, Mary’s husband Jim, a first-time father at the age of 40, was horrified by the sight of his new baby. ‘He looked awful,’ he recalled. ‘Horrible. He had one eye open and just squawked all the time. When I got home I cried for the first time for years and years.’
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