'Baby saved me from dying': Torment of 6st bride who suffered from anorexia tells how son cured her eating disorder

• Wedding guests were shocked at Laura's 'skin and bone' frame
• She only ate five green beans and one square of chocolate a day
• 'I feel like son's birth was divine intervention he's saving my life every day'

Healthy and happy: Laura Wilson and her son Matthew

The wedding guests stared in disbelief as the gaunt bride walked down the aisle weighing just six stone.
But Laura Wilson didn't care that her 'skin and bone' figure was revealed in a strapless size four dress because she was suffering from the crippling eating disorder anorexia.
Now five years later she is healthy and puts her cure down to a new man in her life - her 14-month-old son Matthew.
The boy is a medical 'miracle' says Laura, now 28, who had been told she would never be able to have children because of the damage done to her body by starving herself.
She said: ''I feel like Matthew's birth was divine intervention. He's such a sunny, happy little boy and I adore him. My miracle baby is saving my life every day.'
Laura's is still haunted by her battle with anorexia which began when she was 21 and led her to being hospitalised in a mental health unit near her home in Ballymena, County Antrim, two months after her wedding.
She told how she had become obsessed with looking slim for her big day after her fiance Philip proposed in August, 2006.
Laura recalled: 'I survived on coffee and diet Coke and doing 700 sit-ups a day. I developed bizarre eating habits rituals, like only eating my one '"meal" at 10.30pm on the dot.
'It was always five green beans and one square of chocolate. The thrill of seeing the pounds come off was like nothing else.'
Her problems with anorexia finally reached crisis point for her family when she returned from honeymoon in Phuket, Thailand, in November, 2007, weighing just five stone.

Bride Laura: The wedding guests stared at her emaciated frame in disbelief as she walked down the aisle

'Skin and bone': Laura on her honeymoon in Thailand and on her wedding day with her husband Phillip

Laura, a legal secretary who met Phillip at the accountancy firm where they both worked, had survived on just two slices of pineapple for the entire trip.
Before the wedding, Phillip and Laura's mother Edna had talked her into seeing a counsellor about the disorder which took hold when she was rejected for a teacher training degree at 21.
She told the Sunday Mirror that she was so ill she wanted to die. She knew she was 'skin and bone'  but didn’t care. Being skinny was more important.
Laura added: 'My body and brain were shutting down and I was so weak I didn’t have the same emotions as other people.'

Mummy's little boy: Laura says of Matthew: 'My miracle baby is saving my life every day'

Miracle baby: Newborn Matthew with his mother Laura. She says he saved her life after years of starving her body

Couple: Phillip and Laura had been told she would never have children because of the damage done to her body by starvation

Laura reluctantly agreed to enter the health unit after being taken there by her mother and husband. The medics slowly got her weight to seven stone.
But she suffered a new blow when doctors told her she would be unlikely to conceive because she hadn't had a period for five years.
Her despair turned to joy last March when she discovered she was seven months pregnant after taking a test because her stomach was 'rippling and moving'.
From that moment Laura dedicated herself to her baby's health. Matthew was born four weeks early in June, 2011, weighing 6lbs 3oz.
She told the Sunday Mirror: 'I literally went from starving myself to stuffing myself with as much nutritious food as I could. I was so scared that my baby might have been harmed by my extreme diet and exercise regime.
'I knew I had to do anything to get healthy. If that meant eating three square meals and not exercising then that's what I would do.'
Now Laura and Phillip are now planning to renew their wedding vows so that she can forget her heartache first time around and look back on the day with pride and happiness.