When Patty Resecker found out her daughter-in-law Kayla Jones wasn't able to get pregnant, she offered to be the surrogate. That means that when she gives birth, the baby that enters the world will be not her child but her grandchild.
On March 7, the Texarkana, Arkansas 49-year-old will attempt to get pregnant with Kayla and her husband Cody's child via in vitro fertilization. She hasn't been pregnant in 20 years.
The Facebook page Creating Baby Jones has been sharing updates about the process. On it, Kayla Jones wrote that Resecker took meds so that her uterine lining thickened. The doctors started with estrogen and then gave her progesterone, a steroid, and an antibiotic once it worked.
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Jones also explained why she wasn't able to get pregnant herself. When she was 17, doctors had to remove her uterus after finding a tumor there. It didn't turn out to be cancerous, but its removal left her infertile.
"It has been 10 years knowing I would have to use a surrogate to have children. I’m glad it is somebody I can trust," she told KSLA. "Most people don’t like their mother-in-law, but I’ve got a good one." The feeling is mutual: Resecker said she was "beyond blessed to be able to do that" and that "it wasn't really anything to think about." And Cody Jones is equally excited, calling it "really special in that way that she will actually be carrying her grandbaby."
Jones believes this'll create a unique bond between her mother-in-law and child. "Our kid is going to know that he/she was so loved; his grandmother was willing to endure blood draws, intramuscular injections, multiple testing, and nine months of pregnancy to get them here," she wrote on Facebook. "They say it takes a village to raise a kid, but in our case it takes a village to get them here."