WARSAW, N.Y. (WKBW) — It’s a cold 25 degree day with snow falling outside Wyoming County Community Hospital in Warsaw, but inside, one big happy family.
New parents hearts are warm as they look on to their newborn baby boy, who was delivered this morning weighing a healthy 8 pounds 7 ounces.
“We had a baby,” said Amanda Legasse.
“Well we did and we didn’t,” said her husband Jeremy Legasse.
“We all had a baby,” Amanda said.
Alfred Legasse joined the family shortly after 8:00 a.m. Friday morning. His family says he is a true Thanksgiving blessing.
After trying to get pregnant for more than a year, the Legasse's say they decided to go the route of using a surrogate. Amanda says she has some underlying health issues, and thought of asking a few friends if they would be her surrogate. Before she could, the first person to step up was her 55-year-old mother.
“I of course told her she was too old,” Legasse said. “She didn’t like that. She wasn’t too old. We had done a few transfers that were not successful, and we finally had a successful transfer in March.”
Legasse’s mother carried her daughter’s baby—her grandchild for nine months.
“It was very surreal. We talked once a week on the phone and when he started moving it would be funny because she kept me on speaker phone and he would start kicking when he heard my voice. I spent a lot of weekends at my mom’s just talking to Freddy. It definitely brought us closer together,” she said.
Dr. Farkad Balaya is the Chairman of the OBGYN department at Wyoming County Community Hospital. He’s delivered thousands of babies, but not with a unique situation like this.
“It was such a beautiful moment,” he said of the birth. “You can feel the happiness throughout the whole OR. Even our team was so excited about his delivery today,” he said.
Dr. Balaya says this is one of the proudest moments of his career.
“It’s like there’s no words to explain what happened in the OR today. Everything, it was so beautiful. The happiness on the mom and the grandma—for what she did throughout this pregnancy to give her daughter a baby that she could not have normally by herself, I believe this is the most sacrifice anyone could ever do,” he said.
Grandma is healthy and resting comfortably, and the new parents are getting ready to welcome Alfred home, who already has the nickname Freddy.
“A lot of things behind the scenes came to fruition today,” Jeremy said.
The Legassee’s say the one thing they learned throughout this process was to normalize fertility issues.
“I think it’s important to realize it takes a long time and it is a hard uphill journey but you will get there,” Amanda said.
