Ja'bari Gray is only 10 months old and he's already defying the odds.

The San Antonio infant was just three pounds when he was born on New Year's Day with missing areas of skin on his body, KTRK reports.

"He literally from the neck down, from the front and back, nothing, there was no skin. Even parts of his legs, he had no skin," said his mother Priscilla Maldonado.

READ ALSOSan Antonio baby born without skin receives lab-grown skin grafts

Maldonado said there were no indications of these complications during her pregnancy.

Ja'bari spent three months in the NICU before heading to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston for treatment.

"If it wasn't his purpose to be here, he would have been gone from birth or even before birth, so he does have a purpose in this world, and we never know what it is until the future," Maldonado said.

Doctors told Maldonado only two other babies in the U.S. have been born like Ja'bari. Neither of those babies survived.

According to KTRK, Ja'bari's new skin was grown inside a lab in Boston, which specializes in burn victims.

"That was the first transplant ever that's been done in his situation and on a baby his age," Maldonado told the news outlet.

Now after 10 months and a successful skin transplant, Maldonado can finally cuddle her baby.

"Now you can kiss him, touch him, do all that stuff," she told KTRK. "He got to wear his first set of clothes now, so he's getting there."

Her little bundle of joy is off pain medication and breathing on his own, but he still has a long way to go. Additional surgeries will be required to open his eyelids, and separate his arms, neck, right hand and right foot.

Maldonado is taking everything one step at a time. She says Ja'bari means 'fighter' and she knows her baby boy will continue to do just that.
