61-year-old woman who claimed to be pregnant with a 21-year-old boy is… See more

In a remarkable case reported in India, a 61-year-old woman became a surrogate mother for her own daughter, giving birth to a baby girl who was biologically her granddaughter.

The unusual case took place in Chennai, where the woman, identified in reports by the changed name Rajeshwari, agreed to carry a pregnancy for her 21-year-old daughter, Lakshmi. Lakshmi had previously given birth to a stillborn baby and suffered severe complications that required doctors to remove her uterus. As a result, she could no longer carry another pregnancy herself.

Doctors at the Akash Fertility Centre and Hospital suggested that Lakshmi’s own mother could serve as the surrogate. However, there was a major obstacle: Rajeshwari had already gone through menopause.

Doctors medically restored her menstrual cycle before creating the embryo through intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The egg came from her 21-year-old daughter, while the sperm came from Lakshmi’s husband. This meant that the 61-year-old woman carried a baby that was genetically her daughter’s child, making the newborn her granddaughter.

The pregnancy eventually resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl weighing approximately 2.7 kilograms. Reports also stated that the grandmother breastfed the baby after birth.

The case attracted considerable attention because of the woman’s age and the extraordinary family circumstances surrounding the pregnancy. Doctors described it as a rare example of a family member becoming a gestational surrogate to help another relative have a child.