Chennai: Mar 7 (DHNS): No woman would have thought of becoming a surrogate mother for her own grandchild, but a 61-year-old lady in Tamil Nadu successfully delivered a girl child for her daughter.
Strange but true is the incident which is first of its kind in Tamil Nadu. The woman, mother of three girls, acted as a surrogate for her own daughter. She also breastfed her granddaughter.
“We removed the uterus from the Chennai-based woman, Lakshmi (name changed), after she gave birth to her first child which was born dead due to placental abruption, a complication of pregnancy wherein the placental lining gets separated from the uterus of the mother,” Dr Jeyarani Kamaraj Akash Fertility Centre, said.
As the 21-year-old Lakshmi continued to bleed profusely, doctors had no option but to remove her uterus to save her life, the doctor explained.
According to the doctor, Lakshmi, the third daughter, was dejected by the thought that she could not bear a child. Dr Jeyarani suggested the surrogacy route.
Despite a lot of consultations, her efforts to get a third-party surrogate went in vain. It was during this time that Rajeshwari (name changed) came forward to act as a surrogate and successfully delivered a girl child for her daughter.
The baby, which weighed 2.7 kg at the time of birth, is now little over three months old and is healthy. However, the doctors had to face several challenges in making this a reality as the mother had crossed her menopause stage.
The doctors restored her menstrual cycle and the foetus was developed using Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and, after treatment under ICU, the woman delivered a girl child.
Doctors said Rajeshwari would have no genetic attachment to the child as she had only offered her womb to bear the child. Dr Jeyarani said this was the second such reported case. The earlier being an UK couple adopting this route a few years back at Anand in Gujarat, when the woman delivered twins.
To honour this, the hospital will felicitate Rajeshwari and Lakshmi during the International Women’s Day programme on March 8.