ProNurse

By Arthur Martin

After giving birth to seven babies, Jill Hawkins was happy to call time on her career as a surrogate mother.

But then she found she missed being pregnant so much that she decided to do it all again.

The 45-year-old was implanted with two embryos from a professional couple in their early thirties.

And last night Miss Hawkins said she was ‘absolutely ecstatic’ after a home pregnancy test revealed at least one of the embryos has started to grow in her womb.

It will be the first time she has carried a child not from her own eggs.

She will find out later this month if she is expecting one baby or twins.

’There’s a good chance it could be a multiple pregnancy,’

Miss Hawkins told the Daily Mail. ‘I hope it is. I have never had twins before so I’d love to have that experience.’ Miss Hawkins, who has no children of her own, will hand over the baby – or babies – to the couple while still in the maternity ward.

She insists that she has no desire to keep a baby, and that she is continuing to be a surrogate mother because she loves being pregnant. All the previous children she has given away have been conceived using her own eggs, which were artificially inseminated with sperm from the father.

Miss Hawkins, who will be paid around £12,000 in ‘expenses’ for her pregnancy, had spent 18 months trying for an eighth baby, but without success.

‘My eggs have just packed up which is not unusual for a woman of my age,’ she said. ‘I was worried that because my eggs aren’t as strong as they were that the rest of me might not be up to it either.

‘But I’ve had scans and there’s nothing wrong with my womb so being a host should not be a problem.

‘I love being pregnant. It’s a compulsion I suppose and I really miss it when I’m not pregnant.’ In a previous interview, she insisted she would not undergo IVF treatment to become a surrogate mother for the eighth time.

But it seems that the temptation was too great and Miss Hawkins stepped in to help a 32-year-old mother-of-one who is unable to become pregnant again because of the powerful drugs she had to take after a lung transplant.

The woman and her husband had six embryos frozen before the transplant – two of which are now in Miss Hawkins’ womb.

Miss Hawkins, from Brighton, said: ’It’s a new experience this time because they are not my biological children. I feel different.

I feel there’s not so much pressure on me because it’s not my genes. I’m just providing the womb for the baby to grow in.

She added: ‘Being a host is more of a hassle because of all the fertility drugs you have to take. The side effects can make you feel weepy one moment and then bursting with rage the next.’

Miss Hawkins, a legal secretary, is the most prolific surrogate mother living in Britain. Carole Horlock, from Stevenage in Hertfordshire, who has given birth to 12 surrogate babies, held the title before moving to France four years ago.

Originally published by By Arthur Martin.

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