Patty Resecker, 50, gave birth to her own grandson late last year.
When an Arkansas woman was unable to carry her child, her mother-in-law volunteered to be her surrogate.
At 50 years old and menopausal, Patty Resecker, 50, of Texarkana carried her grandson Kross for her son Cody Jones and daughter-in-law Kayla Jones.
“It's their baby; I was just the valet,” Resecker joked in an interview with InsideEdition.com.
Kayla Jones, 29, explained that she found out at her first OB-GYN appointment at 17 years old that she had a benign tumor in her uterus, for which she had to undergo a partial hysterectomy. While she did not have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation, Jones learned that she would never be able to have children of her own.
“When you’re 17, it doesn’t hit you as much that you can’t have children,” she told InsideEdition.com. “You’ve got prom and dates […] what kind of cars people are driving, you know, that kind of teenager stuff. Then you fall in love and get married and say, ‘OK, I’m ready to start a family,’ and it all comes back around and hits you again.”
Jones, who started dating her now-husband as a teenager, said the family has always been supportive as they explored surrogacy and adoption, but when they encountered let-down after let-down, Resecker stepped in.
“I kept seeing Cody and Kayla kind of get sad and think, ‘What’s our next step?’” Resecker explained. “I told Cody and Kayla that I would do it if I can."
Resecker said it was always a no-brainer after having three children with no complications, but it took some research to find out how she could be their surrogate safely — especially since she was in menopause.
But they discovered Resecker could have hormone injections for her first trimester that would keep her and the baby in good health, and after successfully becoming pregnant through IVF, Jones, a nurse, helped administer the injections daily.
"One of the benefits of having someone very close to you carry is I could go over there almost every day if I wanted to and talk to Kross and feel him kick, and feel really involved,” Jones explained. “If it were a stranger, especially a stranger that lived far away from me, we wouldn’t have had that experience.”
Resecker added: "We got closer […] When Kross started moving around I tried to videotape my belly kind of moving, and you know I just felt so bad that she wasn’t able to carry him, and I wanted her to feel like she was there.”
Baby Kross was born on Dec. 30, 2017, and has been doing well ever since.
"Mother-in-laws tend to overstep, but Patty is definitely not like that," Jones said. “She’s been so great making me feel like he’s mine, even though I didn’t give birth to him.”
Resecker added, "Cody and Kayla are the best parents. They’re just pros already."
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