Holly Griffiths speaks up about being pregnant and anorexic

Holly Griffiths is eight months pregnant. The 21-year-old British mother of one also suffers from anorexia.

"The battle in my head gets stronger and I have to fight more," she says of trying to overcome an eating disorder while expecting, explaining that the anorexic voices "flare up" during pregnancy.

"You lose control over your body."

Despite a 13-year battle with the eating disorder, Griffiths gave birth to a healthy boy, Dylan, two years ago. She was so thin during the pregnancy that one of her ribs cracked as her son grew.

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"I was so lucky he was OK," she tells Daily Mail. "I felt so guilty I had put his life at risk."

She credits her first pregnancy with helping her to turn her life around.

"My transition from train wreck to stability primarily happened during pregnancy," she writes on Tumblr.

Struggling with her second pregnancy

Now Griffiths is struggling to put on the pounds to ensure her second child, a daughter she's already named Isla, will also be born healthy. According to her blog, she hopes to weigh at least 120 pounds by the time she's induced in three weeks.

Now, 35 weeks along, the 5'7" mom weighs just 113 pounds. She says in her 34-week update that she lost 18 pounds due to morning sickness in her first trimester but has finally regained that weight.

She says that eating "is just something I force myself to do at the moment, because I need to," but that her appetite is otherwise gone.

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"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," says Griffiths, admitting to only eating 800 to 1,200 calories a day.

Most pregnant women are expected to eat closer to 2,000 calories a day.

"Thankfully my baby girl is a healthy size and the doctors are happy with my progress," she says.

Sharing her battle online

An avid blogger, Griffiths shares her daily struggles — and adventures in parenting — on her blog, Two Little Dickie Birds.

"Gaining weight is strange. I'm starting to have the niggles of anorexia in my mind over the weight gain and yet I'm setting myself weight gain goals that should terrify me. It's OK though, I'm prepared for this," she writes of her pregnancy.

In February, Griffiths talked about the physical and psychological battles she faces each day during pregnancy on YouTube.

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"Eating disorders in their own are a constant and daily struggle, but pair them with pregnancy and trying to maintain a healthy diet and carry a healthy baby and it feels like you're walking through a field of mines," she says on YouTube.

"Anorexia has ruined my body," Griffiths explains her physical inability to carry a child to term. She already suffers from a heart condition, osteoporosis and arthritis because of her life-long battle.

"Anorexia and pregnancy. The two don't go together, not at all," she concludes. "Pregnancy is the one time that I've ever wanted to get help."

But Griffiths isn't alone

'Pregorexia', or extreme dieting and exercising while pregnant to avoid gaining the recommended amount of weight, has been making headlines in the last few years as a previous unspecified eating disorder.

Merryl Bear, the director of the non-profit National Eating Disorder Information Centre in Toronto, says the expectant mothers suffering from an eating disorder feel a lot of anxiety and guilt.

"(They) are extremely concerned for the health of their babies," says Bear. "It's an extremely difficult struggle for them because physical and emotional changes can actually trigger anxiety...that they can only manage in disordered eating."

Dr. Clarissa Bonanno, an obstetrician who deals with high-risk pregnancies at Columbia University, tells ABCNews.com that eating disorders during pregnancy often go undetected because patients don't open up to their doctors.

"We probably grossly under-diagnose it," Dr. Bonanno says.

"I'm desperate to recover so I can teach my kids a healthy way to approach food. I couldn't bear it if they had body issues like me, so I'm continuing to fight the voices in my head and get better for them," Griffiths tells the Daily Mail.