Surrogate mum has given away two surrogate babies and is trying for a third, at the age 24

As she lay on her hospital bed breastfeeding her newborn baby, Louise Pollard was overcome with love for the scrap of humanity in her arms.
After all, she'd reached the end of a difficult pregnancy which had seen both her own and her unborn child's life hang in the balance as a result of pre-eclampsia. Despite this scene of maternal bliss, however, just three days later Louise handed Danny over to a couple and drove away - a shattering parting which left her crying for three days and yearning only to see her baby again.

'Afterwards, I sat in my mother's conservatory with my sobs literally racking through my body,' she says. 'I could still smell Danny on my jumper and I desperately wanted to be with him. Giving him up was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.' So what on earth was this young mother doing giving her child away? At 23, Louise had become - for the second time - a surrogate for a childless couple. Having had her first surrogate baby at the age of just 21, Louise is thought to be the youngest surrogate mother in the UK. But her candid descriptions of the emotional challenges she faced highlight just how much surrogacy is a role that is rarely straightforward.

Her experience was particularly unusual because both the surrogate children she's had so far were biologically hers. 'At one point, I was close to driving up to London to see Danny and I wondered if I'd done the right thing in giving him up, but the legal situation we would have then ended up in - and the distress I'd have caused the couple in question - doesn't even bear thinking about,' she says. (In theory, as biological mother, Louise would probably have a right to keep Danny had she wanted to.)

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