Julie Loving, now 57, offered to be her daughter’s surrogate in 2019 —and baby Briar arrived the following year
Credit: Breanna Lockwood/Instagram; Courtesy of Breanna Lockwood
NEED TO KNOW
- Chicago grandma Julie Loving served as her daughter’s surrogate and gave birth to her granddaughter in 2020
- “I had no intentions of a viral moment,” Loving’s daughter, Breanna Lockwood, tells PEOPLE
- Since her daughter’s birth, Lockwood has welcomed a second girl in 2024
A Chicago grandmother made headlines when she served as a surrogate for her daughter, ultimately giving birth to her own granddaughter. Five years later, the family’s life remains anything but unconventional.
“We’ve never made it any other way from the beginning, that’s just how it’s been,” mom Breanna Lockwood says.
The journey that culminated in 5-year-old Briar’s birth was emotional for everybody involved.
Lockwood, 35, previously told PEOPLE that she always knew she wanted to be a mother, but that she and her husband Aaron experienced several obstacles, including an ectopic pregnancy, four failed embryo transfers and three miscarriages.
“We went through extensive fertility treatment for about four years before we kind of hit the end of our road where we didn’t have any other options,” she says.
But moving forward with the surrogacy process was “expensive and difficult,” Lockwood says.
Then, her mom stepped in.
“My mom had come with me to some of my fertility appointments and she’d been along for the ride, supportive with everything prior to that,” she says. “And she had come and expressed that she could do it or she offered to do it.”
Credit: Courtesy of Breanna Lockwood
Julie Loving, now 57, offered to be her daughter’s surrogate in 2019, after Lockwood lost a set of twins in her third miscarriage third miscarriage and was diagnosed with Asherman syndrome, a condition that causes the formation of scar tissue inside the uterus and could cause infertility.
“There was no heartbeats, and I was just as devastated as she was. And I just remember driving home, going, ‘Maybe I could do this for her,’ ” Loving recalls thinking.
Loving, who works at an Aldi grocery store, says she waited until her daughter “was healed” before bringing up the idea, which at first, Lockwood didn’t think was realistic given her mom’s age.
But then, her fertility doctor — who initially had his own hesitation — came around to it, too.
“I could kind of see the wheels in his head turning a little bit, like, ‘Okay, she was a Boston marathon runner and super athletic. She really doesn’t look her age,’ ” Lockwood remembers.
Loving eventually passed the required tests needed “probably even better than I would,” says Lockwood, a stay-at-home mom and content creator.
Credit: Courtesy of Breanna Lockwood
On Feb. 25, 2020, the family found out the embryo transfer was successful — and Loving says that for her, there was an upside to being pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID did shut down the world in March, so I actually got to stay home because I was still going to work,” Loving explains. “I got to stay home and just rest and sleep.”
Lockwood notes that Loving was considered immunocompromised and granted leave with the Family and Medical Leave Act.
However, something that took them completely by surprise was the attention they received after first sharing their pregnancy news on social media in June 2020.
“I had no intentions of a viral moment. I was just excited to tell the world that we finally were having a baby,” Lockwood says. “I just shared it privately on my Facebook and some of my friends were like, ‘Can you make this shareable? I want to share this with my page. This is amazing.’ ”
When Lockwood woke up the next morning, the news was everywhere — and while some of the comments were positive, others weren’t.
Altogether, it was just a “really overwhelming” experience, she says.
“It was already a scary time for me because you were only halfway through the pregnancy,” Lockwood adds. “I already was nervous and wanted to get a healthy baby here too, so it was really hard.”
Credit: Breanna Lockwood/Instagram
Loving tells PEOPLE that she felt like she was under a microscope, too.
“It got a little stressful,” she admits. “I felt like the whole world was waiting and watching for this baby.”
Then throughout her third trimester she felt “extra pressure” and just couldn’t wait for baby Brynn to arrive.
When Loving went into labor, the baby’s heartbeat wasn’t cooperating, so doctors decided an emergency cesarean section was necessary. Finally, baby Briar was born on Nov. 2, 2020.
As for her birth story, Lockwood says her smart and spunky 5-year-old daughter knows it all. “It’s not anything new or exciting to her,” she adds, “it’s just her story.”
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In the years since Briar was born, Lockwood was able to welcome another child, daughter Brynn, in Sept. 2024, but that pregnancy was full of its own complications.
“We wanted another baby so badly, and we actually continued to work with another surrogate after my mom,” Lockwood says. “And that surrogate that we worked with was the sweetest person. We had a great connection and a great surrogacy journey altogether, but she had three miscarriages with us.”
When they were ready, they eventually turned to Dr. Mohamad Irani, an OB-GYN at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, who helped Lockwood get pregnant — but tragedy struck again when she miscarried in Aug. 2023.
“This was our miracle baby,” she says. “And then we had the late term loss and that was just crushing. I didn’t think we’d recover from that to get back on our feet.”
Ultimately, the mom tried again and this time, while working with Irani, got pregnant with Brynn. As for the future, the couple hasn’t fully shut the door on welcoming another child, but say they’re taking their time to think about it.
Credit: Courtesy of Breanna Lockwood
Loving says that although she loves all three of her granddaughters differently — her son is also a dad — she’ll always have a unique connection with Briar.
“The other grandchildren aren’t fully speaking yet too, so it’s just easy to have a special something,” she says.
Loving adds, “There’s probably a little special bond there that I’ll always have with her.”
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