It’s going to be a special holiday season for a Wooster, Ohio, grandmother.
Jacilyn Dalenberg, 56, has welcomed triplets into her family, and although she already has other grandchildren, her bond with the latest additions might be a little closer.
She gave birth to them.
Acting as a surrogate for her daughter, Kimberly Coseno, Dalenberg gave birth to three girls — two identical twins and their sister — on October 11 at Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.
"I feel like my normal self, ready to go back to work and whatever," Dalenberg said during an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Dalenberg said she made the extraordinary decision after watching her daughter’s heart break in trying to have more children. Kimberly and her husband, Joe Coseno, met six years ago. Kim already had two children of her own who are now teenagers, and the Cosenos wanted more.
But Kimberly’s hysterectomy left her unable to conceive, and multiple attempts at adoption failed.
That’s when Grandma stepped in, volunteering to be a surrogate for her own grandchildren. After receiving medical clearance, the first two attempts at in vitro fertilization were unsuccessful. On the third attempt, three embryos were placed in Dalenberg’s uterus. Two implanted themselves, and then one of those two split, causing the identical twins and the single baby.
Dalenberg, believed to be one of the oldest surrogates in the country, gave birth nine weeks early. The girls — Elizabeth Jacilyn (Ellie), Carmina Ann, and Gabriella Claire — are doing fine and are expected to be home in Ashland, Ohio, in time for Thanksgiving.
"Words can’t describe it, really," Kimberly told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. "The only way to thank her is to raise the children the way she raised her four girls."
It's not the first time this has happened, a grandmother giving birth to her own grandchildren. In fact, it’s not even the first this year it’s happened. In June, a 52-year-old Michigan grandmother gave birth to her own twin grandchildren.
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