Surrogate sister gave birth to her sibling’s TWINS after doctors warned her breast cancer battle at 30 meant pregnancy could kill her
A WOMAN gave birth to her sister’s twins after breast cancer robbed her sibling of the chance to safely carry her own babies.
In February, Morgan Williams had sister Maggie Paxton’s daughters Emery and Deeanna just over two years after the mum received the shock diagnosis.
Morgan, 34, and Maggie, 33, from Whittier, California, had always been close, even playing on the same high school volleyball team as teens.
Morgan, a single mum-of-one, said: “Growing up I was her protector.”
So, in December 2014, when Maggie, then 30, texted a photo of her wet T-shirt to illustrate how much one of her nipples was leaking, Morgan knew exactly what to say.
Morgan added: “I said: ‘You need to call the doctor’.
“Maggie had been saying for months that her right nipple had been leaking.”
It wasn’t happening every day, but what began as a little wetness once or twice a month eventually became more noticeable.
On the day Maggie sent her sister the selfie the problem was too big to ignore.
She says: “I bent down to pet my puppy and when I sat up my jeans were wet.”
Morgan, who had been pestering her sister to call the doctor for months, said: “My gut told me it wasn’t good.
“Your body tells you when something is wrong. That was not normal.”
Morgan was right. Two weeks later Maggie went to see her doctor who sent her to have a mammogram.
Although there was no history of breast cancer in the family Morgan, who was studying to be an ultrasound tech at the time, was concerned when her sister told her there were white patches on the images.
Morgan said: “We were just going over the breast anatomy [in class], so when Maggie told me what the doctor had seen – white stuff on the image on the screen – because of what I’d read in my textbooks I put two and two together.
“I knew it was cancer. But I kept it to myself.”
But she was still devastated when Maggie’s doctor confirmed the news to the family over speakerphone just days later.
Morgan added: “When I left their house I cried driving home.
“I was angry at God, asking, ‘Why does this happen to good people?’”
Shockingly, the news went from bad to worse and a week later the family were told that Maggie had HER2 - an aggressive form of breast cancer.
Maggie, who had longed to be a mum, was then told that her cancer was hormone-related.
She said: “The oncologist told me if I were to ever get pregnant – because of the hormones – I would be putting my life at risk for the cancer to come back.”
A fertility doctor then advised Maggie and Danny that, if she froze some eggs before she started chemotherapy, a surrogate mother could later carry their children.
That’s when Morgan, who is mum to 10-year-old daughter Mykenzi, stepped in.
She said: “I don’t even know how surrogacy came up.
“I think Maggie said something about doing the hormone treatment [to harvest the eggs] and I said: ‘OK, I’ll do it. I don’t want you to worry about it’. There was no hesitation.
“The chemo was the priority, getting her through her treatment, because we knew it was going to be at least four months.
“Then she had to have her double mastectomy, and breast reconstruction surgeries.”
In April 2016, Morgan started taking medication to suppress her ovaries to prepare her body to carry her sister’s babies.
Then in June, Maggie and her husband Danny watched as a doctor implanted their embryos into Morgan.
Days later, Morgan secretly took several at-home pregnancy tests - which proved the procedure had worked.
Morgan said: “Maggie came over to my house a few nights later.
“By then I’d probably taken five pregnancy tests. I got up, went in my room, pulled out the tests and laid them all down.
“Maggie couldn’t believe it. She was in shock. When we showed Danny later he started crying.”
Eight months later, the Paxtons were by Morgan’s side when she gave birth to their daughters – Emery, 5lbs 7oz, and Deeanna, who was 5lbs 12oz.
Morgan said of the experience: “It was – and still is – so surreal, but it was all worth it.
“They’re great babies. I definitely feel a bond with them.”
Maggie, now a cancer-free new mum, feels nothing but overwhelming love and gratitude for her big sister, whose only request throughout was that they timed the pregnancy so she wasn’t “gigantic in the summer.”
She said: “Morgan and I have been close all our lives.
“These big life-changing things have happened – like her having her daughter, my diagnosis...
“They just brought us closer together. But I don’t know how you can top this.”
Previously, we revealed the surrogate mother who gave birth to her own brother after carrying baby for her mum.