AN expectant mother who had both legs amputated after contracting meningitis is learning to walk again, just a month before her baby is due to be born.

Kim Galvin, who is already mother to three-year-old Izzy, is expecting her second baby next month.

Ten years ago, things looked grim for the advertising manager from Newcastle, when at the age of 25 she contracted the potentially fatal disease.

She was in a coma for ten days and, although her life was saved, both her legs were amputated at the knee.

"I had just finished an aerobics class and I began to feel ill," she said.

"The next morning I crawled across the hallway to my flatmate's room and begged him to call the doctor."

Eventually, she slipped into a coma and was only given a small chance of survival. By the time she pulled through, the disease had poisoned her legs.

"I just wept," said Kim. "I thought, what can I possibly do now?"

Since then, she has struggled to walk more than a few yards with synthetic limbs, and had to use sticks to walk down the aisle on her wedding day in San Franscisco.

Now, she has won a ten-year battle with the National Health Service to have custom-made artificial legs fitted, and has finally thrown away her wheelchair and walking stick.

Last month, she was fitted with the £14,500 limbs at Dorset Orthopaedic Centre - the same place that provided a limb for former North-East model, amputee Heather Mills, fiancee of Paul McCartney.

"I feel like a new woman," said Kim. "Looks-wise they don't compare with what I had before, but the main thing is their sheer quality.

"I used to have other legs fitted about twice a year but the quality got worse and in the past few years I could hardly walk at all. The pain would just get so bad.

"The new legs have given me a new lease of life. I can go to the park with Izzy, like any other mum wearing dresses or sandals and no one notices."

Husband Don, a television producer on Merseyside, said: "She couldn't walk at all before, really, and now she can.

"It's as wonderful as that."