Latina Mother to Give Birth to Grandchild
Julia Navarro, a 58-year-old Utah woman, is preparing to give birth to her granddaughter -- acting as a surrogate for her own daughter, Lorena McKinnon, who was having difficulty becoming pregnant.
Navarro volunteered to carry a child for McKinnon when it was discovered that McKinnon's fertility issues would eliminate any possibilities of her being able to conceive. Prior to this Navarro's pregnancy for her daughter, 32-year-old McKinnon had suffered one dozen miscarriages, with the longest pregnancy only lasting 10 weeks.
McKinnon and her husband looked to others first; taking to many avenues to find a surrogate womb. But, after several failures, Navarro took on the pregnancy -- saving her daughter and her son-in-law nearly half of $60,000 that's normally associated with these sorts of pregnancies, and ceasing the obstacles that persisted when searching for gestational surrogacy.
Like with normal surrogacy arrangements, the couple and Navarro attended three months of counseling.
"The psychologists wanted to make sure we knew what we were getting into -- that we were mentally prepared," McKinnon said. "Mostly, surrogacy contracts are with people you don't know. It was weird to have a contract with my mom."
Salt Lake Tribune stated the doctors gave a 45 percent probability of success of the implant due to Navarro's age. Navarro received shots for three months before the embryo could be implanted.
Now at eight months, however, and the child due in February, the success of the implant was an inexplicable success. In a few short weeks the parents and the grandmother will have a healthy baby girl.
Navarro and McKinnon have said that they've bonded over the unusual pregnancy.
Despite the bazaar nature of the pregnancy, this isn't the first time that a woman has carried her grandchild(ren) to term. In 2012, a 49-year-old woman in Maine gave birth to her grandson, and last year, a 53-year-old woman delivered twin granddaughters.