In an unusual case, a grandmother gave birth to her own grandchild.
Emily Jordan underwent a radical hysterectomy in 2010 after she suffered cervical cancer at a young age.
Jordan believed she and her husband would never have their own children. That’s when her 53-year-old mother, Cindy Reutzel, made a surprising offer, reported The Associated Press.
According to the Daily Mail, Jordan was 29 when she discovered that she had cancer. She was about to have a radical hysterectomy when she realized that she was pregnant.
The woman was faced with saving her own life or the life of her unborn child, and she then made the decision to go forward with the hysterectomy, which means she would lose the child.
“I can’t describe what that was like after finding out you have cancer, after finding out your chance of ever carrying a baby is gone,” she said.
That’s when her other offered to carry the child, the Mail noted.
“We didn’t really think that was a realistic option,” Jordan recalled, reported CBS News.
“The thought of Emily and Mike not being able to have children and share that piece of their lives with someone just broke my heart,” said Reutzel, who lives in Chicago. “I want Emily to have that connection with another human being like I had with her.”
When Reutzel’s belly got larger during the pregnancy, she said it wasn’t her’s but her daughter’s.
“This is a continuation of everything that she has done her entire life for me, which is to make sure that I have the best life possible,” Jordan said.
Reutzel only asked the couple to raise the child the best they could.
The grandmother was able to recover after birth, saying she would do it again.
“When I watch both of them hold that baby and look into her face, it’s like everything I could have imagined wanting for them — better than I could have imagined,” sshe added.
To carry the child, according to CBS, a doctor implanted Reutzel’s uterus with an embryo created by Jordan and her husband, Mike. She also had to take hormonal shots.
“People started pushing the envelope,” said Dr. Helen Kim, director of the in vitro fertilization program at the University of Chicago, according to the report. “If you could help a menopausal woman in her 30s, could you help a menopausal woman in her 40s? And then it became, ‘Can you help a menopausal woman in her 50s?’
“And the answer is yes.”
Woman Has Rare Quintuplets
Doctors were amazed when a Czech woman gave birth to quintuplets, saying it was the first time in the history of the country.
Alexandra Kinova of Milovice, Czech Republic, had ups and downs in her pregnancy. Weeks before delivering the children, according to the Daily Mail, she didn’t know she was pregnant with five babies.
Kinova was in shock when she was told the news, and she originally believed she would have twins.
