Shane and Jennifer with daughter Jolina

Picking up the phone, Jennifer Stermann’s hand trembled with nerves. She was about to tell a man she’d met only once she was pregnant with his child.

And when the line went dead after she broke the news, she was ­devastated, although not altogether surprised.

Nurse Jennifer, had enjoyed a ­one-night stand with Shane Barton, ­a male model on tour with The ­Dreamboys in Germany. And despite being on the Pill at the time, she found out weeks later that she was pregnant.

But despite his lukewarm response at the beginning, things have somehow worked out between the couple. And in fact, they are now engaged.

Even though they lived in ­different countries and barely ­knew each other, and complications at birth left their baby severely disabled, they vowed to care for their child together.

Shane has even given up his job with the world famous all-male stripping troupe to be a full-time carer for their little girl, Jolina Skye. He proposed to Jennifer and, against all the odds, the happy couple are getting married later this year.

“Most men would have run a mile,” says Jennifer. “It was a one-night stand hundreds of miles away from home and then he gets a text telling him I’m having a baby.

“Then our child is born with severe life-limiting disabilities and instead of turning his back, Shane decided to become a round-the-clock carer and my husband. He is one in a million.

“Everyone said we didn’t have a chance of making it work, but now we’ve proved them wrong. Caring for our daughter together brought us closer. I never thought a one-night stand would change my life so dramatically.”

Jennifer, 26, met 23-year-old Shane when he was performing in her ­hometown, Dusseldorf, Germany, with ­The ­Dreamboys in June 2008.

She recalls: “My friend had invited me for a girls’ night out and the show was fantastic. I thought one dancer in particular was totally gorgeous.”

When it was over, Jennifer and her friend got backstage passes to meet the boys in their dressing room.

"I spotted the dancer I’d been ­watching on stage and he was really friendly. He told me his name was Shane and we got chatting.”

Shane as an adult stripper

Shane invited Jennifer and her friend to a party back at his hotel and they ended up in bed together.

She recalls: “I’d never done ­anything like it before, but I was single, he was gorgeous, so I thought ‘why not?’ At the time I just thought it was a bit of harmless fun as I was on the Pill.”

But as Jennifer left the hotel the ­following morning she had no idea just how much her life was about to change.

“I knew Shane was leaving the country that day,” she recalls. “We exchanged numbers but I thought he was just being polite and I never ­expected to hear from him.”

Over the next few weeks they shared a few flirty texts, but then Jennifer missed her period. A test confirmed she was pregnant. “I had only slept with Shane so I knew he was the father,” she says.

“I was stunned but I already knew I had to have the baby. A termination wasn’t an option ­for me.”

Jennifer knew she had to tell Shane she was expecting, but it took her three weeks to pluck up the courage.

She remembers: “I dialed his number, told him he was going to be a father and the line went dead. He’d hung up.”

Jennifer burst into tears, but deep down she had been expecting it. Then 10 minutes later she received a text asking her if she was 100% sure he was the dad. “I replied, telling him there was no doubt and he ­accepted that,” she says.

“I was determined not to put any pressure on him though. I just ­wanted him to know he could have a relationship with our child if he wished.”

Over the next few months Shane ­continued to tour with The Dreamboys but kept in touch via text message for updates on the pregnancy.

“I kept it light so not to scare him and just a few weeks later he rang out of the blue and told me how excited he was about fatherhood,” she says. “I was delighted.”

Shane and Jennifer

When Jennifer was six months pregnant, she flew to Birmingham to see Shane for the first time since their one night stand, and to meet his parents.

“Shane and I held hands and cuddled all weekend,” she says. “It was a crazy situation but for the first time I really wondered if we could make it all work.”

Soon after, Shane met up with Jennifer’s friends and family in Germany. On February 15, 2009 – four weeks before her due date – Jennifer went into labour while Shane was performing in ­Newcastle.

But when her daughter was ­delivered she wasn’t breathing and was rushed straight to a specialist unit.

“I wept so much when ­I saw her,” says ­Jennifer. “She was so ­beautiful, with a button nose.

“Shane liked the name Jolina Skye so I called her that.” Shane flew straight over to Jennifer’s side and later that day they were told their baby ­suffered from meconium aspiration ­syndrome, meaning she had excreted in the womb and inhaled it. As a result she was starved of oxygen.

Jennifer explains: “She was on ­antibiotics to fight infection and oxygen to help her breathe. The medics warned us that she would be brain damaged, although they didn’t yet know to what extent.

“We were shell-shocked. We’d already been through so much and now we didn’t know if our baby would live or die. It was terrifying.”

Jolina was in hospital for six weeks, with Shane flying back and forth to visit as often as he could. The couple gradually grew closer and when Jolina was nine months old in October 2009, he asked them to come and live with him in Birmingham.

Shane recalls: “I knew I was asking a lot for Jennifer to leave her family and friends, but I wanted to be there as a father for Jolina and for her.

“It wasn’t fair for her to cope on her own. I was delighted when she agreed.”

Further tests showed that Jolina also had a rare form of epilepsy and ­doctors warned Shane and Jennifer that she may not even make her ­first birthday.

But they pulled together as a couple to make her life as wonderful as ­possible. At the same time, their feelings for one another grew stronger.

Jennifer says: “Nobody understood what we were going through as much as we did. People assumed it would push us apart but, in fact, it worked the opposite way and we became a team.”

They learned how to tube feed Jolina, give her oxygen and suction saliva from her mouth. Then in March last year, Shane ­proposed and gave up his job with ­The Dreamboys to become a full-time carer for his daughter.

They have been told she will never walk or talk, but she can smile and ­giggle and the couple are fundraising to pay for dolphin therapy in ­the US.

Shane says: “Jennifer and Jolina mean the world. A one-night stand changed my life for ever. We were thrown ­together but we’ve made it work. It was meant to be.”

Jennifer adds: “I can’t wait to ­marry Shane this year. It doesn’t ­matter when or how. Jolina is our priority. We may have done everything the wrong way round, but for us it really has worked.”

TO HELP JOLINA, VISIT WWW.HELPJOLINASKYE.WEBS.COM