At 53 years old, and while undergoing menopause, North Texas grandmother Tracey Thompson became pregnant. Carrying the baby girl was drastically different than when she gave birth to her son and daughter in her 20s.
Yet, it was all worth it to give her daughter, Kelley McKissack, a gift she had asked for 15 years before. When Kelley was 13 years old, she'd asked Thompson to carry a baby for her if she couldn't have one of her own.
Little did the mother know at the time that the innocent question would foreshadow what was to come. At 28 years old, Kelley and her husband struggled with infertility for years, then suffered three heartbreaking miscarriages.
Although Thompson had been menopausal for seven years, there was a loophole. Using medical advances in reproductive technology, McKissack's embryo was successfully implanted into her mom. A positive pregnancy test would eventually reveal that, almost a decade after she had lost the ability to conceive, Thompson was pregnant.
"When I was in my 20s and pregnant with [Kelley] and her brother, it was easy," she told CBS News. "[This time] it was difficult. It was just exhausting."
With the supervision of her doctors, Thompson carried a beautiful baby girl to term. The little one,was born 6 pounds, 11 ounces. McKissack named her Kelcey, combining her and her mother's name. She wants to make sure Kelcey will always know where she came from.
"We will make sure that she, literally growing up, knows every step of it. It will be part of her story," McKissack said.
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