`I will tell them how special they are'

LIZ MARTIN gave birth to twins after a friend donated her eggs. She and her husband, Ron, had been trying to have children for more than 16 years and spent thousands of pounds on fertility treatment. At the age of 40, doctors told Mrs Martin that her eggs had deteriorated and her only hope was a donor.

"It was the last resort but I was determined to become a mother. The only problem I had with it was the two-year waiting list," said Mrs Martin, a 44-year-old caterer from Sheffield.

She was lucky. Two friends volunteered to donate their eggs and on the third attempt Mrs Martin produced Christopher and Sarah, now 21 months old.

"I feel that they are my children, I was pregnant with them and I look after them," she said. "If my friend hadn't donated her eggs I wouldn't have been able to have them, but without me they wouldn't have been born."

Mrs Martin believes her long struggle to have children has made her a more tolerant parent. "I appreciate them more and have more time for them now than I would have done if I'd had them earlier," she said.

"When Christopher has a little tantrum, I just think `carry on' and put my fingers in my ears. After 20 minutes he will come up to me and give me a hug and say he is sorry, and that is that," she said.

She has decided to tell her children about their genetic roots. "I am worried someone else will tell them in a nasty way. I am going to explain to them how special they are and how it took so much to get them. Hopefully they will understand."

Mrs Martin said the birth of the twins had brought her and her husband closer together."People have said my little boy looks like his daddy and Sarah has brown eyes like him but no one has ever said I look like them because most people know."