Los Angeles, April 2: A woman who suffered 11 miscarriages is to become a mother of four, after both she and her best friend, who offered to act as a surrogate, conceived twins with her fertilised eggs.

Tasha Riddle and Raquel Mitola, both 35, are almost seven months’ pregnant and due to give birth on the same day ? June 7.

Raquel, from California, volunteered to bear a child for her friend, from neighbouring Oregon, after doctors advised Tasha to consider surrogacy due to the large number of miscarriages she had suffered.

Tasha accepted her offer, but also decided to have one last shot at having a baby herself. The two women underwent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) at the same time, while being warned that, because of their ages, their chances of conceiving were slim.

Despite the odds, the procedure was a success. Now Tasha and her husband, John, 36, a state government official, are bracing themselves for four new arrivals ? while Raquel and her husband, Jeff, 44, who have two teenage children, are preparing to pitch in and help.

“Everyone has been so surprised by the way it’s worked out,” said Tasha, a housewife, from her home in Coos Bay, on the Oregon coast, on Saturday. “We were trying for one baby out of this, but now we are having four. We’re so very happy.”

Raquel said: “It was my husband’s idea. We knew what Tasha and John had been going through; how much they wanted a baby and how I loved to be pregnant. It just seemed the perfect answer.”

The Riddles, who got together as teenagers at school, had been trying for a baby for seven years, but Tasha suffered numerous miscarriages and, after her 11th and a $25,000 bill for IVF treatment, she decided that Raquel’s offer was her only chance.

“Financially, we could not keep doing it ? emotionally, too,” she said.

“You get to a point where you throw up your hands and say, ‘OK, this is it’. I called Raquel and asked if she was still in a position to be a surrogate for us. She started crying, she was so honoured to be asked, and we were so honoured she had offered. It was an emotional conversation.”

Tasha’s doctor at the Fertility Centre of Oregon, in the city of Eugene, suggested she also make one last attempt at having a baby.

So, on the same day, both women were implanted with eggs that had been taken from Tasha during her previous IVF attempt. They had been fertilised with her husband’s sperm five days earlier.

The mothers-to-be were about six weeks’ pregnant when they discovered both were carrying twins. Tasha had been implanted with four eggs in the hope that one would take, while Raquel was implanted with two.

“We’ll probably never know why it worked this time,” said Tasha, who is expecting girls. Raquel is pregnant with a boy and a girl.

Tasha, who is dark haired and Raquel, who is blonde, met, aged 11, at school in Crescent City, California, where the Mitolas still live.

“We’ve always been close,” said Raquel, who has a daughter, Mickelle, 15, and son, Chase, 13. She said she was not worried about handing back the children she had carried for her friend. “I don’t think (it will be hard) because I will always be a part of their lives,” she said.

Throughout their pregnancies, the women have spoken each day on the telephone. “With twins, you don’t usually carry to full term,” said Raquel. “But we would like to be at each others’, if it doesn’t happen on the same day.”

An extension is being built at the Riddles’ two-bedroom house. Friends have donated a four-seater pushchair and relatives are offering to stay after the births.