A South Tyneside one-year-old baby survived after falling nine feet from their balcony with only a huge bruise on one of his eyes.

Jonah Murphy was playing upstairs when he finally decided to take his first steps and accidentally fell nine feet from a balcony at their home, plunging face first straight through an unusually wider gap in the spindles down the tiled floor.

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Jonah's accident happened two days prior to his birthday on July 19, where he was supposed to show his parents his first steps.

At the time, his mother was in the kitchen while his 39-year-old father, David, was upstairs inside a bedroom.

After hearing a thud and seeing her lying on the floor, Jonah's mother, Kelly, rushed to take her baby to the hospital thinking that they had lost him.

"I just heard this thud and I screamed and swooped straight in to pick him up. I think it took a couple of seconds for Jonah to realize what happened and then he started screaming.

"I thought we were going to lose him or that if he survived he wouldn't be the same little boy he was before. By some miracle, he's OK," she stated.

The adventurous tot was confined at the South Tyneside District Hospital before he was transferred to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

After a series of tests, CT scan and X-rays, Jonah was declared far from harm with only a severely bruised eye and a cracked eye socket.

"He's doing great now. He is back on his feet now, although I would rather he wasn't to be honest," his 33-year-old mother explained expressing her regret that his first steps had led to a mishap.

The five-inch gaps have been baby-proofed by the family prior to the incident though they did not foresee that the gap closest to the wall was wider by an inch.

Tagsbaby, fall, toddler, miracle, survive