surrogate mother
Representative image.Reuters

In an extraordinary turn of events, a 61-year-old lady in Tamil Nadu successfully delivered a girl child for her daughter. The woman, a mother of three, acted as a surrogate for her daughter, and even went on to breastfeed her granddaughter.

"We removed the uterus from the Chennai-based woman, Lakshmi (name changed), after she gave birth to her first child who was born dead due to placental abruption, a complication of pregnancy wherein the placental lining gets separated from the uterus of the mother," Dr Jeyarani Kamaraj said.

Doctors had no option but to remove 21-year-old Lakshmi's uterus as she was bleeding profusely, Kamaraj said, reports Deccan Herald.

The thought of not being able to bear a child was putting Lakshmi under a lot of distress. That is when Dr Jeyarani suggested the surrogacy route.

Since efforts of getting a third-party surrogacy did not yield any results, Rajeshwari (name changed) came forward to act as a surrogate and successfully delivered a girl child for her daughter.

The baby is just over three months old; it weighed 2.7 kg at the time of birth.

According to Doctor Jeyarani, this was the second such reported case. A UK couple had used the same method at Anand in Gujarat a few years back; the woman delivered twins on that occasion.

Rajeshwari and Lakshmi will be felicitated by the hospital on 8 March, which is International Women's Day.