Diane Blood, who won a legal battle to use her dead husband's frozen sperm to conceive a child, yesterday said she was pregnant for the second time by the same method.

Flanked by her father, Michael McMahon, and her son, Liam, three, and sporting a three-and-a-half month bump, she spoke of the "miracle" of this second pregnancy.

Mrs Blood, 35, mounted a lengthy and traumatic court case which began in 1995 when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority refused to allow the widow to conceive with her late husband's sperm. The case ended triumphantly when, having remortgaged her bungalow in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, she won her appeal in 1997 then began IVF treatment in Belgium.

Her late husband, Stephen, who was her teenage sweetheart, died suddenly of meningitis in 1995 at the age of 30. The couple had already been attempting to start a family.

She spoke of her frustration with the law which prevented Stephen being named as the father on Liam's birth certificate. She is campaigning to enable her to include her late husband's name this time around. "I don't want to go through registering another child as illegitimate when I don't regard them as such," she said.

Although Mrs Blood admitted this pregnancy was marred by almost constant morning sickness, it had not made her maudlin. "The way in which I have conceived has humbled me to the whole process of pregnancy and I realise, whether it is achieved naturally or through IVF, it is always a miracle," she said.

"Of course, I wish Stephen could be here to witness the birth but I have always known that was never going to be the case. Stephen would have been delighted and I am overjoyed to be pregnant again." Mrs Blood said she was unconcerned over the sex of her second child, who will be born in early July.