Jeff Hauck was moved when his mother, 56-year-old Nancy Hauck, firstoffered to serve as a surrogate for him and his wife Cambria, who were left with few options for expanding their family following her hysterectomy. Though he didn’t initially think the moving gesture was a possibility, his mother gave birth to Jeff and Cambria’sdaughter Hannah,their fifth child, on Wednesday afternoon, the Utah family exclusively tells PEOPLE.
“How many people get to watch their mom give birth?” says Jeff, 33, who calls the experience “a beautiful moment.”
“It’s really special that it gets to be my daughter,” adds the web developer.
While the idea of being in the delivery room while your mom gives birth might sound awkward, Jeff says, “I don’t really see it that way.”
Nancy, who was in labor for about nine hours, says “it was a remarkable and spiritual experience” to share as a family.
She adds, “It is a mix of deep gratitude and some sadness from the separation.”
“Six days after the transfer, when she got the positive pregnancy test,” Jeff says, his mother was “woken up in the middle of the night, and she heard a little voice that said, ‘My name is Hannah.’ "
The Hauck family.Shalli Aldred
Looking up the moniker, they discovered that “the name Nancy comes from Hannah,” explains Cambria, 30. “They both mean grace.”
“I knew instantly that that was her name,” adds the new mom of five, asocial media influencerand nonprofit dance studio co-owner.
Having a big family has always been important to the couple who were both raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and met shortly before Cambria’s senior year of high school.
“From the time I was a teenager, I knew that if I could only be one thing, I wanted to be a dad,” says Jeff.
“We always had in our mind that we wanted four to six — whatever the Lord would bless us with, is what we would always say,” adds Cambria.
After tying the knot on Dec. 12, 2012 — “we just loved that it was a once-in-a-lifetime date,” says Cambria — the couple learned that starting a family wouldn’t be without its challenges. “We found pretty quickly that I had infertility issues,” she says.
It took four years of fertility treatments before the couple conceived their first children — twin girls Vera and Ayva, now 4 — with the help of IVF.
The couple, who were able to fertilize seven embryos with one round of IVF, went on to welcome twins again — sons Diesel and Luca, now 13 months — last year.
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Although everything initially seemed fine after their sons were born, about two hours later Cambria began experiencing “severe pain and cramping” and felt “gushes of blood.” When doctors checked on her, they found she was hemorrhaging. Suddenly, the couple had to make a decision about Cambria having a hysterectomy.
“That was a hard choice for us,” recalls Cambria, who ultimately chose to undergo the procedure.
Although her own life was on the line, the couple knew that having the procedure would mean they might not be able to “use all of our embryos.”
“We wanted to give them all a chance at life,” she says.
As soon as she woke up from surgery, they immediately started talking about their options. “And we both decided that we would just move forward in faith,” she says. “At some point we would know what we’re supposed to do.”
As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait long.
Cambria and Nancy Hauck.Laura Sheppard
About a month and a half later, Nancy first brought up the idea of being the couple’s surrogate — which nobody, including Nancy, thought would actually be possible due to her age.
Still, Nancy says she made the offer because “I wanted Jeff to know that I would have been willing to do it.”
When Jeff brought it up to his wife later that day, they both agreed that it was incredibly sweet, but didn’t give it much thought.
When Nancy broached the topic again a few weeks later, the couple agreed to discuss it with their fertility specialist at an upcoming appointment.
Much to their surprise, their specialist said that so long as Nancy was healthy and willing to do it, surrogacy wasn’t off the table — and after getting a clean bill of health from her own OB-GYN, everything started falling into place.
Nancy, whose last child with her husband was born over two decades ago, had gone eight or nine months without having her period when it suddenly “came back.”
Dr. Russell Foulk — who supervised and implanted the embryos that resulted in both of Cambria’s pregnancies, and did the same for her mother-in-law — explains that Nancy “was in perimenopause, which means the ovary is still making hormones.”
“You still make some, so your periods become erratic or irregular, unpredictable,” he says.
Foulk, the founder and director of the Utah Fertility Center, says that it’s a “misunderstood concept” that a woman’s fertility declines with age.
“The reality is that the only reason there’s truth to that is the health of the egg,” he says. “The uterus, unless there’s been some new medical issue that’s arisen in that 25 years, still maintains its capacity to carry a pregnancy.”
Although it is “unusual for a mother to carry her grandchild,” the doctor says that “age is really not the limiting” factor. “Really, it goes to health, goes to the state of health of that individual,” he explains, adding that one potential added risk is that with age there’s a higher chance “to have more medical problems, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.” However, in his assessment, he found Nancy to be “healthy and capable.”
Around the same time, Jeff got a new job and Cambria began getting opportunities for paid social media campaigns.
“It was just amazing when we would look at our account and we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have all the money we need for it,’ " says Cambria.
Finally, on Feb. 17, the embryo transfer took place — and just six days later, Nancy’s pregnancy test came back positive.
“At this point, we all knew that this was meant to be,” says Cambria.
Hauck family.Laura Sheppard
Still, Nancy admits that she had “a lot of worries” about the pregnancy.
With this in mind, Nancy asked that Cambria and Jeff wait togo public on social mediawith the news until she was six months pregnant.
“I’m also a private person, and Cambria has a really big following on Instagram,” she adds. “I knew our lives would change, and I really needed six months to contemplate on how that would be, to get some attention and gracefully handle it.”
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The pregnancy has been a “beautiful” experience for the entire family.
“I go to every appointment with her and it’s been so amazing to see her carry with so much grace and beauty and poise and she just shines,” says Cambria. “She doesn’t even have the pregnancy glow — she just radiates so much light everywhere she goes.”
Although she says there’s “no way that we can really repay Nancy and Jason for this miracle,” Cambria and Jeff cook them dinner every week and always offer to help clean.
The experience has also brought Nancy closer with her husband. “We have some routines that we’ve developed,” says Jason, 59. “She gets a foot, leg rub every night when we’re watchingThe Great British Baking Show, and just a lot of care. I get to cook meals for her.”
For her part, Nancy says she’s “never been this spoiled in my whole life.”
After Hannah’s birth, Nancy plans to take a full three weeks off work and write a book about the experience.
Nancy Hauck.Porter photo studio
While Jason and Nancy are far from being first-time grandparents, they admit that they’re in “new territory” with Hannah.
“I hope that we won’t treat Hannah any differently,” says Jason. “But we’ll always have that connection — that Nancy carried her for nine months. Just the magic of the whole experience will always be unique in our eyes.”
“In my heart I want all of my grandkids to know that they’re equally as loved,” adds Nancy, “and I would’ve done it for any of them.”
source: people.com
