Dr. John Norian was recently quoted in an article written by Jamie Davis Smith for Yahoo Life titled “When their kids struggle to conceive, some grandmas serve as surrogates. Here’s what it’s like.”
When Kaitlyn Munoz was growing up, she and her seven siblings often talked about what they wanted to do when they were older. “All she wanted to be was a mom,” remembers Munoz’s mother, Chalise Smith.
After receiving a diagnosis for Sjogren’s syndrome, Munoz was told that she “wouldn’t survive” another pregnancy. She began looking for a surrogate to carry her two remaining embryos and her mother wondered if she — then a 49-year-old grandmother — could go through the pregnancy herself. After getting cleared by her doctors, Smith offered to act as her daughter’s gestational carrier, and gave birth to her granddaughter Alayna in May 2022.
Although grandmothers acting as surrogates for their own grandchildren is unusual, Smith’s case is not unique. It often makes headlines when a “surrograndma” carries a baby when their own child is struggling with infertility, or is gay and in need of a gestational carrier. Fertility specialists say the set-up can be a good option for some families.
Dr. John Norian, a reproductive endocrinologist with HRC Fertility Rancho Cucamonga and Pasadena, explains that the process for older women acting as surrogates involves “waking up” the woman’s uterus with the hormone estradiol and progesterone therapy. To learn more, read the article in its entirety here.