It’s not often that you hear a woman in her 70s giving birth at such a late stage in her life, but that’s exactly what happened here. Only there was something strange about the baby, something a little off, and what the parents discovered next will absolutely blow your mind.
This story starts when Lauren Palmer, a 70-year-old woman from Texas, agreed to be the surrogate mother for her daughter’s baby. Lauren’s daughter was initially skeptical at first, what with her mother’s advancing years, which is totally understandable. But she and her husband discussed things and eventually came around to the idea. So, it was decided Lauren would carry her daughter’s baby and essentially give birth to her own grandchild.
But first, Lauren had to be signed off as fit, healthy, and capable of actually carrying the baby. Childbirth causes a lot of stress on the body for even the fittest and healthiest of women, so doctors had to be sure that she was capable of the mammoth task of being pregnant in her 70s. Medical professionals did a whole battery of tests on Lauren, including physical and mental examinations, even scanning her womb in order to find out whether it was able to bear a child.
Speaking about the pregnancy, one doctor said that you never know what could happen at a time like this, especially since Lauren Palmer was over 70 years old. And he’s right, it’s a risky business that could go catastrophically wrong in a whole lot of different ways if the proper safety checks aren’t put in. In fact, over 300,000 women a year die from childbirth, so as you can see, it’s not just a walk in the park.
However, what they found is that Lauren, despite her advancing years, was fit and healthy enough for the task, even remarking that her uterus was in particularly good shape. The pregnancy was greenlit and things were good to go. It certainly must have been an exciting time for all involved.
Lauren was impregnated via in vitro fertilization, also known as IVF for short. This is where the mother’s egg and father’s sperm are joined together and the fertile egg cell is planted within a surrogate mother’s uterus. That way, the baby can grow and mature in a body that is physically capable of carrying them to full term.
Despite Lauren’s age and inherent risks involved with pregnancy, everything went surprisingly well with no unexpected hiccups along the way. Just to be sure though, doctors kept a particularly close eye on both Lauren and the baby. They needn’t have worried though, and soon enough, the time came for the baby to be born.
In order not to put any undue stress on Lauren’s body, the doctors decided to perform a caesarean section. This is where a surgical slit is made in the mother’s stomach, and the baby is removed that way, as opposed to coming out of the vaginal canal. It’s nothing out of the ordinary and a fairly common procedure that just guarantees a little more safety for all parties involved.
But again, everything went off without a hitch, and Lauren handed over the beautiful little baby boy to her elated daughter and son-in-law. They named him Harvey, and all seemed well in the world. Being able to give your daughter and her partner such an incredible gift must be one of the most rewarding things in the world. And actually physically carrying and birthing your own grandchild must have formed a bond with them that will last a lifetime.
The newly complete family went home and began the daunting process of learning how to become parents. And as any parent out there will tell you, it’s no easy task. Luckily, Harvey wasn’t too much of a handful, not even crying too much or making much of a fuss. Sounds like the perfect baby boy to us.
But here’s where things started to get a little weird. You see, Harvey was carrying a secret, a secret so mind-blowing and strange that it would rock the worlds of everyone involved in the little baby boy’s life.
As Harvey lay in Lauren’s lap one day, happily cooing and waving and doing all those cute and adorable things babies do, her husband, Tom, reached across to stroke the little baby boy’s head and run his fingers through his hair. But after several moments of fussing him and giving the baby some attention, Tom noticed something. Something that gave him real cause for concern.
He alerted Lauren, and they alerted Harvey’s parents, and they all agreed that they needed to call the doctor immediately. A panicked call was made, and the doctor suggested that they come in to see him so he could check the baby out for himself and run a few tests.
Understandably nervous and in need of reassurance, the family rushed the baby to the hospital where he was given the once-over. They ran tests, took samples, and spent over half an hour studying little Harvey who lay none the wiser about all the fuss he was currently causing.
But after closely and carefully studying the results of their tests, the medical staff discovered something that they had never seen before in their entire professional lives. A second round of tests was carried out on Harvey just to confirm their findings, but the results were indisputable.
After plenty of head scratching and disbelieving chat, the doctors were ready to break the unbelievable news to Lauren and the family. The baby was found to have not two sets of DNA, but three. Normally, a baby will contain two sets of DNA, one from the mother and the other from the father, so to find the third set is incredibly rare. It’s so rare that it’s pretty much unheard of, actually. But it was there in black and white, confirmed by the many tests that the doctors had run on Harvey.
Harvey’s family were shocked. How was this possible? Everyone knows that to make a baby, you need two sets of DNA. But how on earth could a third get mixed up in there? Even in the history of women being surrogate mothers, nothing like this had ever happened. Harvey really was one-off in every sense of the word.
The doctors were equally perplexed but laid out their theory to the family. The third set of DNA must have come from Harvey’s surrogate mother, his grandmother, Lauren. Over the course of the nine months carrying the baby, he must have absorbed parts of her DNA, meaning that he would go on to directly inherit several characteristics from Lauren in later life, for example, the head full of shocking white hair that was already covering his little head.
And one of the most incredible things is that Lauren, being in her 70s, didn’t factor into the mutation at all. I’m sure you were thinking that her age was going to play into the story somehow, but no. This could happen with a surrogate mother of any age. It really is a strange but awesome mix of unusual events.
In fact, Lauren had no issues following the pregnancy, which is incredible. Luckily, the doctors didn’t seem concerned about Harvey, in fact finding it kind of miraculous. They did confirm to the family that this amazing mutation was possible in theory, that it had just very rarely, if ever, been documented as happening.
I suppose when you think about it, it’s kind of crazy that more babies don’t take on the DNA of their surrogate mothers, considering how long they’re in their uteri. In fact, in recent years, doctors
have used the DNA of three separate individuals to help create a designer baby that would be free of serious hereditary issues that might be passed down from the mother or the father. It’s quite a controversial process, with some people going as far as saying doctors and scientists are playing God by messing with life in this way. However, I can see how it has its uses, to allow people to have children that are going to be free of any life-changing issues.
But that’s not what happened here. This was totally natural and occurred without any intervention from doctors or scientists. The fertilized egg in Lauren contained only two people’s DNA to start with and over time started to absorb the DNA of Lauren. Completely natural, completely unavoidable, and totally incredible.
Thankfully, despite this unusual occurrence, Harvey is still fit and healthy to this very day and won’t suffer any complications or adverse effects later on in life because of this unique mutation. As well as being an amalgamation of the best parts of his mother and his father, he also has more of his grandmother, Lauren, in him than he will ever know. And really, that’s quite beautiful when you think about it. Isn’t life amazing?
