A little girl born without kidneys is to be placed on the transplant waiting list after a 19-month battle to reach the right weight.

Alice Skinner has just achieved the magic 10kg (221lbs) and is strong enough to have the operation which her anxious parents have been praying for since her her birth.

Her father, George, 33, said: "She gets weighed every morning and every night on the digital scales, and as soon as we saw she had hit 10kg I rang the hospital to tell them.

"It has taken her 19 months to get there, so it is a real milestone and we're really proud of her."

Alice has had tissue-typing tests at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary. Once the results are back, she will go on the transplant list.

George and Alice's mother, Nicola Andrews, 32, will travel from their home in Hartlepool to meet the RVI's transplant team.

Both George and Nicola would donate one of their own kidneys to help their daughter but doctors have told them that an adult kidney would probably be too large for Alice's body.

She has already had to undergo seven operations, and still has to be fed through a tube in her stomach.

Her rare condition, which affects one child in a million, went unnoticed during pregnancy.

She was initially able to live thanks to a tiny surviving piece of kidney, even though it operated at just five per cent of the efficiency of a pair of healthy organs.

After that piece of tissue died when she was six months old, Alice was connected to a dialysis machine.

Since then she has spent ten hours a day on dialysis.

Alice also has a problem with the base of her spine.

Children with renal failure do not normally walk until they are three, and Alice has just started to "bottom shuffle" around, according to her parents.

Her mother said: "She's wearing all her clothes out following us around."