In the days after Liam Pursley was born in April, the woman who carried him for nine months barely saw him.

Liam spent most of his time with his mother and father, Jamie and Jacob Pursley. His surrogate mother, Kristen Broome, stayed in a separate hospital room, trying to navigate the swirl of emotions.

“I held him and cried,” Ms. Broome said of the first time she saw Liam, about an hour after he was born. “I cried because I realized he was not mine and I had zero connection. It was an amazing emotion. I did not hold him again until almost 36 hours later; I had zero urge to.”

That made reality easier.

In an essay she plans to publish soon on her blog, Ms. Broome, 24, writes: “I have been asked more times than I can count how I felt when I gave Liam away. My first response is always that I didn’t give Liam away; he was never mine to give.”

Jill Knight

Jill Knight, a 22-year-old photographer from Charlotte, N.C., photographed the last few months of the pregnancy for “Special Delivery” an emotional series about motherhood and the intense relationship between a mother and a surrogate. In December 2011, Ms. Knight received an e-mail from Ms. Broome, who was looking for advice on Web site design. Her second cousin, Ms. Pursley, had lost a baby at 16 weeks. When Ms. Pursley, 28, learned that she could no longer carry children, Ms. Broome offered to be a surrogate.

Ms. Knight was studying at Penn State when she heard the story. She and Ms. Broome kept in touch, and about a year later she returned to Charlotte to start taking photographs.

Although the two women had one major thing in common — they are both military spouses — Ms. Knight said it wasn’t easy to gain Ms. Broome’s trust. Ms. Broome’s husband was serving in Afghanistan, leaving her alone with their child, a 2-year-old boy. Emotionally, as a mother, a military spouse and a surrogate, she was pulled in different directions.

“I think that sometimes made her a little closed-off,” Ms. Knight said, “whereas Jamie really wanted her story told.”

Eventually, Ms. Broome opened up. Ms. Knight followed her and Ms. Pursley to their medical appointments every couple of weeks. By March, she was spending longer periods with them — 24 hours every few days.

“I think the amount of time I was spending with them, they trusted that I was genuinely interested in their story,” she said.

Both Ms. Broome and Ms. Pursley said in e-mails that they were thrilled to share their story with Ms. Knight, despite the difficulties involved. They wanted to be advocates for surrogacy and to help other women understand the process. But while Ms. Pursley said she rarely minded Ms. Knight’s presence, there were a few moments when Ms. Broome regretted the invitation.

“I never cared that she was in my appointments or my life,” she wrote. “However, I hated being photographed when I wasn’t put together or wearing cute shoes. In our impromptu photo shoot, my nails weren’t done and there were close-ups of my hands.”

She added, “I also didn’t like being photographed when I cried.”

There was tension throughout the process, Ms. Knight said, resulting from a combination of hormones and the range of emotions surrogacy prompted in both women.

Ms. Pursley said there were times when she felt “highly jealous” that the embryo she and her husband had produced could be implanted so simply in another woman’s womb. She also wanted more control over the body that was hosting her baby.

For Ms. Knight, the third woman in the room, maintaining trust with both of her subjects was a balancing act. “It was so much,” Ms. Knight said. “It was hard to watch sometimes.”

Jill Knight

Still, being a woman was an advantage, if not a necessity, in this case. “In terms of what was happening with Jamie’s body, she felt like she couldn’t do what a woman was designed to do,” Ms. Knight said. “That immediately broke down walls.”

Ms. Knight had never known a surrogate before she began working on the project, titled “Special Delivery.”

“I was under the impression that surrogates were very highly paid,” she said. Ms. Broome, however, had offered to carry the baby without compensation, though the Pursleys covered her expenses, including maternity clothing.

“I wanted to be a surrogate for a while for a few personal reasons,” Ms. Broome said in an e-mail. “It was something I felt I would gain from. Whether it was spiritually or emotionally, I wasn’t sure. When everything happened to Jamie and she lost the ability to have children, I knew it was the right time.”

The delivery itself, a scheduled induction, went smoothly, but the day was emotionally difficult for other reasons. Ms. Broome’s husband was on the last leg of a deployment in Afghanistan. Just as Ms. Broome was about to deliver, she learned that a jet was missing. A man in her husband’s squadron died less than an hour before Liam was born.

In Charlotte, Ms. Broome pushed for about four minutes — “it was very smooth, quiet, no screaming-television moment,” she said — and Liam was born. The hospital staff placed the baby in Ms. Pursley’s bare arms so that mother and son could have skin-to-skin contact.

Ms. Knight’s pictures from the delivery room are taken from Ms. Broome’s perspective, lit only by a window and a single overhead light the doctor turned on. “Special Delivery” was an independent study overseen by John Beale at Penn State, where Ms. Knight will receive her degree after she completes a coming internship with The Charlotte Observer.

Ms. Knight hopes to have children one day, “but not for a very long time,” she said.

“I think a lot of people think that birth photographs can be very disgusting,” she said, “but when you’re in the room, there’s a very strong adrenaline and a certain sense about everything that’s going on.”

For Liam’s mother, it was a “perfect day.”

“I will never forget any aspect of it,” Ms. Pursley wrote in an e-mail. “I remember looking out the window and seeing the same scenery that I saw a year and a half before when I was hospitalized in the same facility and almost died, and I could feel the same emotions that made such a mark on my personality.”

When Liam was born, she said, she felt a “strong, thick layer of invisible relief.”

As of Wednesday, Liam was five weeks old.

“Your love as a parent grows with time, if that’s even imaginable, and it’s the best feeling,” Ms. Pursley wrote in an e-mail. “His first smile, his first laugh — all of those little milestones happen so quickly. But if anything good has come from our situation, it’s that I know to cherish this time with our newborn. Admittedly, I wish I could relive the past month (beginning with his birth) over and over, but push pause so that I could truly soak in this little miracle. Every day is beautiful.”

Jill Knight

Jamie and Jacob Pursley run a foundation to support those who have suffered the loss of a child and infertility. Ms. Pursley also writes a blog. Follow @jillography, @kerrimac and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.