This Is Cheshire

For Jacqui, who already has a 10-year-old boy and two daughters aged eight and 12, it meant nine months of sickness, cravings, fatigue and discomfort while her body adapted to being pregnant with twins.

But why would someone like Jacqui be prepared to endure those 36 weeks and go through the agony of childbirth for the benefit of another woman?

"After discussing it with my friends and family I decided it was what I really wanted to do," she said.

"I had thought about being an egg donor years ago and surrogacy just seemed the right thing for me.

"It didn't feel any different really, it just felt good that I was doing it for someone else.

"At the end of the day I wanted to give something to someone that they could not give themselves - the best gift of all, life."

Surrogacy is now pretty much widely accepted, but not everyone agrees with it and the issue has long been publicly controversial, particularly in relation to whether it is morally acceptable.

Women who choose to bear children voluntarily for someone else, have often been seen as cold and heartless, because they seem to easily "give their babies away".

Many surrogate mothers are seen as being motivated by materialistic motives and even when there is no financial reward involved, choosing to have a baby for someone else represents a rejection of the infant by its biological mother.

And this point of view, believes Jacqui, is due to a lack of education and misinformation about the issues surrounding surrogacy.

But from day one she was determined to be as open as possible with everyone she knew about the surrogacy, including her own children.

In her case, Jacqui chose host surrogacy, meaning she would ultimately have no genetic link to the children she eventually gave birth to.

She got to know the other couple involved in the surrogacy fairly well during the nine months, and the biological mother was actually present at the birth.

It was also agreed that Jacqui, who gave up her job house cleaning while she was pregnant, would be able to keep in touch with the twins, and she is now planning to visit them during the summer break.