54-Year-Old Mom Pregnant With Own Grandchild After Going Through Menopause

KEY POINTS

Maree Arnold, 54, is set to give birth to her grandson this January
She became her daughter's surrogate because the 28-year-old has no uterus and was unable to fall pregnant
Arnold had gone through menopause and had to reverse the process with medication in order to become a surrogate

A 54-year-old woman in the Australian state of Tasmania who has gone through menopause will soon give birth to her own grandson after she agreed to become her daughter's surrogate.

Maree Arnold, who is now serving as a surrogate for her 28-year-old daughter Meagan White, became pregnant earlier this year after going through three failed in vitro fertilization (IVF) attempts, 7News.com.au reported. She is due to give birth to her grandson in January next year.

The mother of five said it was "an easy decision to make" after she watched her daughter and son-in-law struggle with the pain of not being able to start a family of their own.

Arnold's daughter has no uterus and was unable to fall pregnant. White was diagnosed at the age of 17 with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare disorder that causes the vagina and uterus to be underdeveloped or absent, a report by Australian media outlet Tyla said.

Arnold had stepped in to become her daughter's surrogate after an IVF attempt with a Canadian woman resulted in the baby being miscarried at 21 weeks. She is now reportedly set to become the country's oldest surrogate.

"We’ve tried not to get too excited too early, but now we’re in the final trimester everything is kind of hitting us, it’s very exciting," White, who called her mother's decision "incredible," was quoted as saying.

Arnold, for her part, said the entire pregnancy process has been "really good" and "easy."

"I had been through menopause and did all that, then they reversed it all with medication and it went along just fine. Now I suppose I have to go through it all again," Arnold said.

The 54-year-old admitted she was "waiting for something to go wrong" but said nothing happened and "everything is great."

The oldest known surrogate in the world is a Greek woman named Anastassia Ontou, who gave birth to her daughter's baby via cesarean section back in 2016 when she was 67 years old.

Ontou's then-43-year-old daughter had undergone seven failed pregnancy attempts before her elderly mother offered to become her surrogate.

The oldest surrogate mother in the world prior to Ontou was Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara of Spain, who gave birth to twin boys at the age of 66 in 2006, according to Guinness World Records.