A man who stabbed his pregnant girlfriend with a machete has been jailed for six years.

Joseph Docherty turned on the woman, who was two months' pregnant, hours after they had been sipping champagne in bed to mark the New Year.

The 35-year-old plunged a knife into his girlfriend's leg after biting her at a house in Uddingston, Lanarkshire.

He later claimed the assault had been "a carry on", but a judge heard she was still struggling to cope with what happened.

Docherty admitted assaulting the 28-year-old to her severe injury, permanent disfigurement and impairment as well to the danger of her life on January 1 this year.

A court heard the couple had been dating for just over a year and had celebrated Hogmanay together shortly before the attack.

Sentencing him on Wednesday at the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lord Mulholland told Docherty: "Having carried out this appalling assault you then told her to 'shut up' and instructed those present that no-one was calling an ambulance.

"This was a cowardly and nasty attack on a defenceless, pregnant woman.

"This is serious domestic violence."

Surgeons who operated on the victim found that her main arteries and veins were completely severed.

During surgery she was given ten units of blood and eight plasma packs without which she could have died.