Chalise Smith has given birth to her own granddaughter at the age of 50 in Utah, United States. Her daughter Kaitlyn Muñoz, 25, has a fertility problem that she has battled by undergoing egg retrieval and in vitro fertilization (IVF), but no treatment seemed to work. Smith then offered her womb to her daughter and last month she gave birth to a baby girl who is genetically her daughter and her son-in-law.
The newly grandmother was the mother of eight children when she set out to help her daughter on her impossible mission to start a family with her husband. Her daughter's infertility and her intense struggle to combat it moved her and she decided to offer herself as a "surrogate mother" to help her.
As Smith told the media, he used his faith and the local church of which he is a member to consider this option and help his daughter. The woman told ABC7 that "it was on my mind every day. I wondered if this was a direction for me. But one day I was folding clothes and I had the feeling that I had to offer myself to gestate these embryos."
Chalise Smith's relationship with both her daughter Kaitlyn and her son-in-law, Miguel Muñoz, has always been "very strong," which helped her make the decision to lend herself as a mother. Her young daughter was going through a very difficult time of her infertility when her mother brought up her idea.
Kaitlyn was successful with IVF treatment, with which she was able to have her first child, Callahan. However, in January 2021 she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that damaged her kidneys and prevented her from being "in good condition to carry another pregnancy."
"With the IVF process, I had the injections for the first 10 weeks of the pregnancy. My husband became a great nurse giving those injections. Everything was great. We went to Disneyland for my 50th birthday," Kaitlyn said happily about her first and only pregnancy.
Their second child, a baby girl named Alayna Kait-Chalise, came into the world on May 17 thanks to the womb of her grandmother Chalise, who says she is "a nice, healthy baby." Kaitlyn excitedly commented that "she's my first girl. She wanted to be named after me, but she definitely wanted to name her after my mother, too, because she was the one who brought her into the world."
