TINY Eleanor Smith has proved she is a real water baby by getting her first swimming certificate aged only two-and-a-half.

Proud mum Kathy, 35, watched her daughter - born 14 weeks premature with a chronic lung condition - swim unassisted across the pool to earn the first of what will surely be many awards.

"We've already got her down for the Olympics in 2012!" said Kathy. "She's our own little water baby."

"She had to swim at least two metres for the certificate but she actually swam further. She loves it and doesn't even mind getting her face wet."

By learning to swim so young, little Eleanor has amazed the doctors who Kathy says didn't expect her to survive after being born after 26 weeks and weighing only two pounds.

"She was so poorly they didn't expect her to live," Kathy said. "The doctor who saved her said she'd had no right to get through what she did.

"But even in her incubator the nurses were calling her feisty and my husband Ian and I reckon she's tough enough to do anything."

Kathy, a primary school teacher from Upton, Widnes, takes Eleanor swimming as often as possible and would encourage other parents and children to do the same.

"I was always told at school that swimming is the only thing you can learn to save your life," she said.

"And the doctors say it's the best thing we can do to help her lungs.

"If we could go every day we would."