Grandmother Gives Birth to Granddaughter

Grandmother Offered to Be Surrogate to Daughter

Infertility tends to affect one out of every six couples like the McKissacks. After the miscarriages, the McKissacks had only four embryos left from the earlier vitro fertilization -IVF treatments when Tracey Thomson, a 54 year old grandmother offered to be a surrogate to her daughter who struggled with fertility issues.

At the time of IVF, mature eggs are collected from the woman’s ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. Then the embryo is transferred to the uterus. Thompson had undergone stress tests, full evaluations together with hormones prior to completing the infertility treatment. According to the Medical Centre of Plano, `Tracey had been seven years past menopause but in excellent health. Age alone is typically a limiting factor for childbirth and surrogacy. But medical advances in assisted reproductive technology tend to permit late-in-life surrogacy, under thorough supervision’.

 Tracey Thompson had the opportunity of not only giving birth to her daughter Kelly McKissack, presently 28 yearsold, but also the surrogate mother to McKissacks’s daughter. After several efforts at fertility treatment together with three miscarriages, McKissack and husband Aaron McKissack, 33 had the pleasure of a new-born baby girl, Kelcey McKissacks.

Women Can Give Birth – Surrogacy is Deemed Safe

McKissack had informed KHOU that `she is beautiful and just perfect. No one could give someone a greater gift, ever’. For Thompson, the pregnancy was not an easy affair. Her first and third trimester had been particularly hard and she faced complications at the time of labour. Kelcey’s heart rate too began dropping too far which urged the doctors to go in for a Caesarean section.

Often age however being a limiting factor for pregnancy, hormonal supplementation together with assisted reproductive technology – ART enables women to give birth even after going through menopause. As a matter of fact, it is said that women can give birth when surrogacy is deemed safe, at any age.

The story of the birth began when Kelley McKissack of 28 years of age had faced years of infertility problems. Her husband Aaron and Kelly had made several attempts on multiple IVF treatment and had gone through three heart-breaking miscarriages. It was at this point of time that Kelley’s mother offered to be a surrogate mother for her daughter.

Surrogacy A Possible Option

Kelley had mentioned that `my lovely mom offered to give me the greatest gift I could ever have in my life’. It was said that when Kelley was a teenager, she had jokingly asked her mom to carry her baby.She informed CNN affiliate KTVT that she said, `If I can’t carry my own baby will you carry it for me?’ who had replied that she would, not dreaming that she would actually be doing it.

That promise had been kept when an embryo had been successfully implanted into Thompson in April 2015. Though she was seven years past menopause but in good health, Thompson had to go through several treatments earlier to enable her body to carry the baby. Eventually she gave birth to a healthy six pound eleven ounce baby girl on January 7 at The Medical Centre of Plano in Texas.

The unique name `Kelcey’ had been created by joining the names of her mother and her grandmother – Kelley and Tracey. Their story is being shared by the family to make others aware that surrogacy is a possible option especially to those couples who tend to have issues conceiving on using other methods.