With her ribs visible beside her slender arms, anorexic 21-year-old Holly Griffiths looks barely able to carry herself, let alone a growing child.

Incredibly, however, she is eight months pregnant, her tiny frame hiding an almost fully-formed baby.

Pictures of the young woman, who weighs just 8st 1lb and is 5ft 7in tall, have emerged as she battles to put on weight to keep her unborn child healthy.

Holly Griffiths, 21, has battled anorexia since she was a child. She managed to give birth to a healthy baby boy called Dylan (pictured) when she was 19 and now is hoping to give birth to a little girl she has named Isla

Miss Griffiths has struggled with eating problems for 13 years but has already given birth to one healthy child, a son called Dylan, now two, despite also risking his life in pregnancy to keep herself thin.

Normally, pregnant women are expected to consume about 2,000 calories a day but Miss Griffiths makes do with between 800 and 1,200, eating one slice of toast for breakfast, salad for lunch, and plain pasta for dinner.

She has to see a high-risk maternity doctor, but a 4D scan of the child, who she has named Isla, shows she currently looks healthy.

Despite being 32 weeks pregnant Miss Griffiths does not look as if she is pregnant at all. She is trying to put on as much weight as possible for her baby before she is induced in three weeks

Holly is carrying a girl that she has named Isla (pictured here in her 20-week scan). Doctors says the baby is doing well and is healthy despite her mother’s low weight

A 32-week scan shows Isla’s face as she grows into a healthy baby. Miss Griffiths says she is eating energy-rich snacks such as nuts and smoothies to put on weight and provide nutirnts for her baby girl

‘I know I have to eat for the baby, but it’s hard to push the voices away that are telling me I’m fat,’ said Miss Griffiths from Greenwich, South London, who is engaged to the child’s father, gym manager Harrison Bogbanovs, 24. ‘When I first discovered I was pregnant I was terrified of having to gain weight again.

‘I suffered terrible morning sickness which caused my weight to drop, triggering my anorexia

‘I had thoughts of purging but didn’t need to, my body was reacting in its own way. This made eating a lot  easier, because I would just vomit it up anyway.’

When Miss Griffiths was pregnant with Dylan she was so thin that one of her ribs cracked as the baby grew.

Miss Griffiths (pictured, left, age six) developed anorexia when she was eight after ballet classes put pressure on her to lose weight. She has fought the condition for years and has gained a healthy weight for short periods of time. In summer last year she relapsed (right) and plummeted to seven stone despite being 5’7″

She was induced at 37 weeks and gave birth after a labour of only ten minutes.

Dylan weighed 5lb 10oz and, to her relief, was healthy. ‘I was so lucky he was OK,’ she said. ‘I felt so guilty I had put his life at risk.’

Miss Griffiths was eight when she started battling with her weight. She blames her condition on the pressure to look skinny in a leotard while taking ballet classes.

By 12 she had been admitted to a children’s psychiatric clinic weighing just 5st 5lb – about 3st underweight.

Read more: Daily Mail