54-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth to Her Own Granddaughter
Talk about the ultimate expression of a mother’s love: A 54-year-old woman recently served as a surrogate for her daughter, enduring a nine-month pregnancy and giving birth to her own granddaughter, via C-section. Both grandmother and baby are in good health and doing well.
“It is such a blessing that I can do this for my daughter,” says Tracey Thompson from the Medical Center of Plano, Texas, where the 6 lb. 11 oz. girl was born on Jan. 6. The baby’s parents, Kelley, 28, and Aaron McKissack, 33, named their baby “Kelcey,” a combination of Tracey and Kelley, the grandmother’s and mother’s names.
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The McKissacks had been struggling with infertility and undergoing treatments for three years, experiencing three miscarriages, the last one on Christmas Day 2014. But the couple still had four embryos remaining from previous in vitro fertilization treatments, according to the hospital.
Photo: Courtesy of the Medical Center of Plano
Seeing their heartbreak, Thompson offered to be a surrogate for her daughter and son-in-law — even though she was seven years past menopause. But she was in excellent health, so after a series of stress tests, evaluations, and hormone therapy, her body was prepared to carry a baby once again. One of her daughter’s remaining embryos was successfully implanted in April 2015.
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Although Thompson had already given birth twice, to Kelly and a son who is now 30, it had been almost three decades since she had borne a child. “The second trimester was great!” she told local WFAA news. But “the first and third were really tough.”
Labor presented another challenge once the baby’s heart rate started dropping and Joseph Levano, MD, the staff ob-gyn who was delivering the child, decided a C-section was necessary. This was a first for Thompson. It looks like it will also be her last. When asked if she’d do it again should the parents decide that Kelcey needs a sibling, Thompson said, “I’m done.”
Photo: Courtesy of the Medical Center of Plano
McKissack is grateful her mother agreed to carry Kelcey. “No one could give someone a greater gift — ever.” The baby girl is “beautiful, she’s just perfect.”
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Instances of older family members carrying younger relatives’ children have happened in the past.
Last August, a 51-year-old North Dakota woman, Sherri Dickson, welcomed her own granddaughter after watching her daughter struggle with infertility treatments.
“Pregnancy was easy,” Dickson, already a mother of three, told ABC. “I was very fortunate. … I was playing tennis a week before I delivered and working out with my trainer, but the delivery at 51 was way harder than the delivery at 33 with my last baby.”
In 2011, Kristine Casey gave birth to her own grandson at age 61, becoming possibly the oldest woman to deliver in the state of Illinois. Casey’s daughter, Sara Connell, and her husband, Bill, were the biological parents of the child.
In 2002, Marie LaPlant, then 44, carried her daughter’s twins after she was inspired by watching a similar case on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Top photo: Courtesy of the Medical Center of Plano
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