OLYMPIA, Wash. — Danielle Rants gave her twin sister battling cancer an incredible gift — offering to serve as her surrogate.
Kaila Jorgensen, an Olympia, Washington resident, didn’t believe she’d be able to have children. This grim realization came after a cancer diagnosis three years ago. Sister Danielle made those thoughts a mute point when she offered to carry her twin sister’s unborn child.
“Luckily, it worked on the first try and there wasn’t a lot of failed attempts,” Rants told InsideEdition.com about becoming pregnant. “It was kind of nerve-wracking and I didn’t know what to expect, but I have been getting through [pregnancy] OK and I’ve had no complications or anything so far.”
Kaila and her husband had known for awhile that they would try to start a family some day. Those plans were stopped in their tracks when Kaila found out that she had breast cancer. Doctors suggested that Kaila freeze her eggs, but she couldn’t complete the process as her cancer progressed.
“We had no idea what we were going to do. We kept pushing my oncologist at our monthly visits, saying, ‘You know we are getting married soon, we want to have kids. What is that going to look like? Are we going to have to wait five years?’” Jorgenson said.
Kaila’s doctors couldn’t answer the question for sure. At least, not without taking some time to wait for the situation to develop.
An incredible gift
As Danielle saw her sister suffer with this side effect of her cancer, she began to research surrogacy on her own. She then decided to talk the idea over with her doctor who gave her the okay to begin the process. Danielle is single and at the time didn’t want any children of her own. Despite this, Danielle decided to carry the baby for her sister.
“Being her twin sister I just decided it just kind of felt natural to offer myself to do it for her,” Rants said. “I don’t want kids of my own but I have a healthy body, so yeah, it just felt right.”
Kaila had no idea what her sister had been up to. The generosity blew her away.
Her cancer has since progressed, but Kaila and her husband are still very excited. Their baby is due in June.
“It’s not anything I would have expected. Going into this process we thought that’d I’d just be on medication and be OK, but a few months into the pregnancy things changed,” Jorgensen said.
Kaila and Danielle said that the the surrogacy process has strengthened their relationship and brought them closer together as sisters.
“My sister is giving us a gift bigger than we could have ever expected or imagined,” Jorgensen said. “We can’t even begin to thank her enough, but we owe her everything.”
