‘What a gift to give’: For a woman struggling with infertility, a sister’s unexpected offer of surrogacy brings new hope
Lydia Gatton’s first in vitro fertilization appointment was just a week away when the fifth-grade teacher fell to the floor in the cafeteria of Hopewell Elementary in Bettendorf, Iowa, suffering a grand mal seizure. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed the then 29-year-old with a brain tumor.
Gatton and her husband had struggled to conceive naturally for years and completed six unsuccessful intrauterine inseminations. After the brain tumor diagnosis in 2016, Gatton would undergo two brain surgeries, radiation treatment, chemotherapy, followed by an embryo transfer that failed. But after all that, another embryo transfer had worked, and in fall 2019, Gatton was expecting.
