After suffering nine miscarriages and an unsuccessful in vitro fertilization attempt, Court and Melissa Kayser decided the best way to start a family would be through surrogacy.
But they never have could have imagined that their surrogate was already in the family. After joking about the idea for quite some time, Melissa’s 35-year-old sister Lisa Auten agreed to carry the couple’s children. On March 26, Auten gave birth to twin girls, Ashlynn and Tierney, and the Kaysers’ dream of having a family was realized.
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“I told her, ‘You can use my uterus!’ And we laughed and joked about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait, you can actually use my uterus,’” Auten told People. “I watched [Melissa] go through loss after loss… She would send me a text saying, ‘Another miscarriage.’ It was devastating to hear her talking about it because she has wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember.”
Auten, who is unmarried and has no children of her own, wasn’t sure she would be physically able to be a surrogate, but six days after the embryo transplant procedure in August 2016, she learned both embryos had implanted, and she was pregnant with twins.
“When the lady was doing the ultrasound, I told her to count again,” Auten joked to KETV of finding out she was carrying two babies.
The healthy baby girls were delivered via a cesarean section at 35 weeks and each weighed in at more than five pounds. Auten, who lives not far from the Kaysers, visits the twins every week.
People reports that the Omaha, Nebraska-based sisters have always considered themselves to be “best friends,” but Kayser was still overwhelmed by selflessness of Auten’s gesture.
“I am so incredibly grateful for what Lisa did,” Kayser said. “She gave up a year of her life to help us become a family and that is something I could never repay. We have two beautiful little girls, all because of my incredible sister.”
(H/T: People)
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