Little Salula Goode and her family will have a special cause for celebration on her second birthday next month.

Salula has spent the last eight months with her arm encased in a rigid metal framework.

The little girl was born with one thumb missing and her left arm and hand bent and twisted back, a condition called radial club hand.

Doctors at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital fitted the frame in February to help straighten, lengthen and strengthen Salula's arm, which has a bone missing.

Every day since then, Salula's mother, Tracy, has had to tighten a screw on the frame, which is pinned into the toddler's arm from the wrist to elbow, by a quarter of a millimetre.

Thanks to the process of tiny movements each day, Salula's arm is now straight.

This week she returns to hospital and tomorrow will undergo an operation to remove the frame and adjust her arm muscles and tendons.

It will be the latest in a series of hospital visits for Salula who was diagnosed as having a hole in the heart and underwent a life-saving six-hour heart operation when she was nine weeks old.

Now Salula's family are determined to give her an extra special birthday party after she comes out of hospital with her "new" arm.

Tracy, from Moulsecoomb, Brighton, said: "Salula has been through so much but she is such a sunny little girl. She has got a big personality and she is always happy.

"She has coped so well and she takes it all in her stride. To her it is just normal and she even pretends to put bandages on her doll's arm."

Salula and her mum regularly visit the Hillview Family Centre in Moulsecoomb and Tracy is full of praise for the support they have received from staff and friends there.

Salula's brothers and sisters, Brandon, seven, Bradley, six, and Samara, five, are not affected by the condition and her parents are not clear what caused it. Doctors told Tracy it might be connected with anti-depressants she was taking when she fell pregnant, which have since been withdrawn.

Tracy said: "I am amazed at the change in Salula's arm. Although they say they can do this and do that, because it was so crooked, I never thought it would look normal.

"When they told me at the hospital I would have to turn the screw each day I thought there is no way I can do that. But now I am used to it - they even get me demonstrating it to student nurses.

"It doesn't hurt Salula when I turn it, but in the last few weeks she has got a bit fed up with having the frame on and she will be pleased when it is taken off."

Because Salula's has no thumb on her left hand experts at Great Ormond Street initially intended to remove part of one of her fingers to create a thumb.

However, the toddler has got on so well using her fingers to grasp items, doctors and her family have decided to wait and let Salula decide when she is older whether she wants a thumb.

She will need more treatment for her arm as it grows but for now Salula's family and looking forward to her coming home from hospital after the operation.