Last year, Julie Loving, 52, gave birth to her granddaughter after volunteering to be her daughter’s gestational surrogate.
Audacy wrote about the story in November of 2020 when the grandmother delivered a healthy baby girl with her daughter, Breanna Lockwood, right next to her.
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The baby, named Briar Juliette Lockwood, was born on November 2 and is the first biological child for Breanna and her husband, Aaron.
Following her daughter’s birth, Lockwood opened up about her mother's surrogacy postpartum depression in an Instagram post.
Lockwood captioned the post with a picture of her mother and baby that read, “Post partum looks different on every person, Here’s our experience with postpartum... as a 51.. turning 52 year old surrogate grandma.”
"I am so proud of my mom. I still look at her in awe. But it wasn’t all just smooth sailing," Lockwood added. "I think people ultimately think surrogacy postpartum is sadness because they don’t get the baby. But that couldn’t be further from the case."
Both Lockwood and her mother spoke to Insider about the experience of the birth of Briar.
“I think the birth was a little traumatic,” Loving said. “I was not mentally prepared for a C-section, when maybe I should have put more thought into it. Because it can easily go that way.”
“I just really wanted to make sure the baby was healthy and OK, whatever that took,” she added. “My biggest excitement was that I really wanted to see Breanna and those first moments when she got her baby girl, and I missed out on that a little bit.”
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Lockwood also explained how after Briar's arrival her mother “didn’t want to talk about the birth experience for a while.” She added that Loving was excited about the delivery, but the process made her sad.
"I never experienced it with my own pregnancies years ago," Loving said. "I just started to feel feelings of anxiety or fears that I hadn't ever felt previously. Nothing related to the baby. Mostly just my own recovery maybe."
"I can't explain exactly what brought on the anxiety," she continued. "I also experienced a lot of nausea, and I think that also gave me more fear that I would get sick and be in a lot of pain from my incision."
While Loving's symptoms subsided after four weeks, Lockwood thought it was important to share her mother’s story.
"I couldn't just go on and not share our experience and pretend everything was perfect and smooth," she told the outlet.
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