Grandmother, 56, Gives Birth to Her Son and Daughter-in-Law's Baby: 'We Are Feeling So Blessed'
Jeff Hauck was moved when his mother, 56-year-old Nancy Hauck, first offered to serve as a surrogate for him and his wife Cambria, who were left with few options for expanding their family following her hysterectomy. Though he didn't initially think the moving gesture was a possibility, his mother gave birth to Jeff and Cambria's daughter Hannah, their fifth child, on Wednesday afternoon, the Utah family exclusively tells PEOPLE.
"How many people get to watch their mom give birth?" says Jeff, 33, who calls the experience "a beautiful moment."
"It's really special that it gets to be my daughter," adds the web developer.
While the idea of being in the delivery room while your mom gives birth might sound awkward, Jeff says, "I don't really see it that way."
Shalli Aldred (L-R) Jason Hauck, Nancy Hauck, Baby Hannah, Cambria Hauck and Jeff Hauck
Nancy, who was in labor for about nine hours, says "it was a remarkable and spiritual experience" to share as a family.
"Everything went perfectly and we are feeling so blessed to have her in our family," she shares. Now, as she continues to recover, she's also "facing new emotions of having a baby, but not bringing the baby home with me afterwards."
She adds, "It is a mix of deep gratitude and some sadness from the separation."
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As for the decision to name their baby Hannah, the St. George couple says it's the perfect tribute to her grandma.
"Six days after the transfer, when she got the positive pregnancy test," Jeff says, his mother was "woken up in the middle of the night, and she heard a little voice that said, 'My name is Hannah.' "
Shalli Aldred The Hauck family
Nancy, an associate provost at Utah Tech University, calls it a "really special and spiritual experience" where she became confident the baby would be a girl, even without testing. It didn't take long before the couple was convinced too.
Looking up the moniker, they discovered that "the name Nancy comes from Hannah," explains Cambria, 30. "They both mean grace."
"I knew instantly that that was her name," adds the new mom of five, a social media influencer and nonprofit dance studio co-owner.
Having a big family has always been important to the couple who were both raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and met shortly before Cambria's senior year of high school.
"From the time I was a teenager, I knew that if I could only be one thing, I wanted to be a dad," says Jeff.
"We always had in our mind that we wanted four to six — whatever the Lord would bless us with, is what we would always say," adds Cambria.
After tying the knot on Dec. 12, 2012 — "we just loved that it was a once-in-a-lifetime date," says Cambria — the couple learned that starting a family wouldn't be without its challenges. "We found pretty quickly that I had infertility issues," she says.
It took four years of fertility treatments before the couple conceived their first children — twin girls Vera and Ayva, now 4 — with the help of IVF.
The couple, who were able to fertilize seven embryos with one round of IVF, went on to welcome twins again — sons Diesel and Luca, now 13 months — last year.
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Although everything initially seemed fine after their sons were born, about two hours later Cambria began experiencing "severe pain and cramping" and felt "gushes of blood." When doctors checked on her, they found she was hemorrhaging. Suddenly, the couple had to make a decision about Cambria having a hysterectomy.
"That was a hard choice for us," recalls Cambria, who ultimately chose to undergo the procedure.
Although her own life was on the line, the couple knew that having the procedure would mean they might not be able to "use all of our embryos."
"We wanted to give them all a chance at life," she says.
As soon as she woke up from surgery, they immediately started talking about their options. "And we both decided that we would just move forward in faith," she says. "At some point we would know what we're supposed to do."
As it turned out, they didn't have to wait long.
Laura Sheppard Cambria and Nancy Hauck
About a month and a half later, Nancy first brought up the idea of being the couple's surrogate — which nobody, including Nancy, thought would actually be possible due to her age.
Still, Nancy says she made the offer because "I wanted Jeff to know that I would have been willing to do it."
When Jeff brought it up to his wife later that day, they both agreed that it was incredibly sweet, but didn't give it much thought.
Nancy's husband, Jason, felt the same way. "I was really touched by her offer to do that. I thought it was a very selfless thing," he says. "But I didn't think it would be an option."
When Nancy broached the topic again a few weeks later, the couple agreed to discuss it with their fertility specialist at an upcoming appointment.
Much to their surprise, their specialist said that so long as Nancy was healthy and willing to do it, surrogacy wasn't off the table — and after getting a clean bill of health from her own OB-GYN, everything started falling into place.
Nancy, whose last child with her husband was born over two decades ago, had gone eight or nine months without having her period when it suddenly "came back."
Dr. Russell Foulk — who supervised and implanted the embryos that resulted in both of Cambria's pregnancies, and did the same for her mother-in-law — explains that Nancy "was in perimenopause, which means the ovary is still making hormones."
"You still make some, so your periods become erratic or irregular, unpredictable," he says.
Foulk, the founder and director of the Utah Fertility Center, says that it's a "misunderstood concept" that a woman's fertility declines with age.
"The reality is that the only reason there's truth to that is the health of the egg," he says. "The uterus, unless there's been some new medical issue that's arisen in that 25 years, still maintains its capacity to carry a pregnancy."
Although it is "unusual for a mother to carry her grandchild," the doctor says that "age is really not the limiting" factor. "Really, it goes to health, goes to the state of health of that individual," he explains, adding that one potential added risk is that with age there's a higher chance "to have more medical problems, such as diabetes or high blood pressure." However, in his assessment, he found Nancy to be "healthy and capable."
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Around the same time, Jeff got a new job and Cambria began getting opportunities for paid social media campaigns.
"It was just amazing when we would look at our account and we're like, 'Oh my gosh, we have all the money we need for it,' " says Cambria.
Finally, on Feb. 17, the embryo transfer took place — and just six days later, Nancy's pregnancy test came back positive.
"At this point, we all knew that this was meant to be," says Cambria.
Laura Sheppard Hauck family
Still, Nancy admits that she had "a lot of worries" about the pregnancy.
"My greatest fear was that I would lose the baby and feel that I had taken the chance for that baby's life because of my age," she says.
With this in mind, Nancy asked that Cambria and Jeff wait to go public on social media with the news until she was six months pregnant.
"I'm also a private person, and Cambria has a really big following on Instagram," she adds. "I knew our lives would change, and I really needed six months to contemplate on how that would be, to get some attention and gracefully handle it."
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The pregnancy has been a "beautiful" experience for the entire family.
"I go to every appointment with her and it's been so amazing to see her carry with so much grace and beauty and poise and she just shines," says Cambria. "She doesn't even have the pregnancy glow — she just radiates so much light everywhere she goes."
Although she says there's "no way that we can really repay Nancy and Jason for this miracle," Cambria and Jeff cook them dinner every week and always offer to help clean.
The experience has also brought Nancy closer with her husband. "We have some routines that we've developed," says Jason, 59. "She gets a foot, leg rub every night when we're watching The Great British Baking Show, and just a lot of care. I get to cook meals for her."
For her part, Nancy says she's "never been this spoiled in my whole life."
After Hannah's birth, Nancy plans to take a full three weeks off work and write a book about the experience.
"I'm going to address the separation [from the baby], the sadness," she says. "Even though I know that the baby's going to my son, I know there'll be a little bit of that empty feeling."
Porter photo studio Nancy Hauck
While Jason and Nancy are far from being first-time grandparents, they admit that they're in "new territory" with Hannah.
"I hope that we won't treat Hannah any differently," says Jason. "But we'll always have that connection — that Nancy carried her for nine months. Just the magic of the whole experience will always be unique in our eyes."
"In my heart I want all of my grandkids to know that they're equally as loved," adds Nancy, "and I would've done it for any of them."
