Grandmother gives birth to twin granddaughters

Baby twins Hallee and Hadlee Larkin may have a harder time than most babies in deciding what to call their grandmother.

Susie Kozisek, an Iowa mother of four, gave birth to the twins -- her own granddaughters -- acting as a gestational carrier for her daughter, Ashley Larkin. Kozisek has four children of her own, including Larkin, that are in their 20s and 30s.

Larkin has pulmonary hypertension and cannot get pregnant, so Kozisek, 53, carried the babies for her. She was also the gestational carrier for Larkin's older daughter, Harper.

A gestational carrier volunteers to carry a pregnancy for another woman that cannot carry it herself. The eggs and sperm are harvested from the prospective parents then artificially joined through in vitro fertilization.

The resulting embryo is implanted in the carrier's uterus.

"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," Kozisek said.

The embryos for the twins were kept in storage at the Mayo Clinic since 2010, and were implanted in Kozisek's uterus in November 2012.

"It's unusual 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," Jensen said. "But she was a good candidate because she'd carried previous pregnancies successfully and was in excellent health."