14 DAY TRIAL // A grandmother from Iowa has stepped up to carry the twin babies of her youngest daughter.
Susie Kozisek is 53 years old and, according to doctors, she is in perfect health and has been an excellent candidate for the procedure.
She has four children of her own and she has already carried to term another pregnancy of her daughter's.
Ashley Larkin could not get pregnant due to an underlying condition. Her pulmonary hypertension would have rendered her unable to carry a child, and she now has three. In 2011, her mother gave birth to her first daughter.
Earlier this month, her twin daughters were born, also with her mother's help. Kozisek wanted to help her daughter and she got information about in-vitro fertilization.
"I heard about the procedure on a talk show and decided to check out the possibility of me doing this for them so they could have kids of their own if they wanted," she tells ABC News.
"I've always been close with my mom even before this so that hasn't changed and I'm grateful she will have such a special bond with her grandkids," her daughter Larkin describes.
The embryos were implanted in November, but they had been harvested in October of 2010 at the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Jani Jensen, a fertility doctor at the clinic OKed the procedure after performing relevant testing.
"It's usual for a mother to act as a gestational carrier for her own child and she was at the older end of the spectrum for pregnancy. [...] But she was a good candidate because she'd carried previous pregnancies successfully and was in excellent health.
"They are a testament to the profound love a mother can have for her child. [...] It is an incredible thing this mother did so her daughter could have children," Jensen explains.