DOCTORS said he would not live past his first birthday - but little Jacob Shaw has just turned three.

The youngster was born with an incurable spinal condition and a rare deformity that means his brain sits on top of his spinal cord.

His mother Kirsty Mair, 29, was offered the chance to abort her unborn baby when it was discovered he had spina bifida and fluid on the brain at her 20-week scan.

But she refused and he continues to defy medical odds, following 17 operations and more than two years in hospital.

His family have been called on four separate occasions to say goodbye when he was not expected to survive.

But Ms Mair, from Macduff, Aberdeenshire, said: "He's like a little soldier, he just keeps on fighting. I think he's trying to tell us that he's here for a reason. They said he wouldn't talk or be able to roll or sit up himself but he is able to do all those things."

Jacob, who would stop breathing up to three times a day, was also expected to need oxygen as he slept. But against all odds he came off it two months ago.

Now he is looking forward to celebrating his first Christmas at home.

He still relies on a wheelchair, as the spina bifida has left him paralysed from the waist down, but Ms Mair says he is like any other cheeky toddler, and he will start nursery next year.

She said that without the surgeries he received at the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill in Glasgow, he would not be here today.

She said: "There have been plenty of times I came close to losing him, but he keeps battling on and comes out fighting stronger. And in January this year it was the best day of my life when I got to bring him home."

Ms Mair knows that Jacob will need risky surgery in the future to lift his brain off his spine and relieve the pressure it is causing.

But, for now, she is enjoying family life with her son.

"Hopefully this will be his first Christmas at home," she said. "He really is a little miracle."