First Baby Born Through Surrogacy Celebrates Her 40th Birthday: ‘How Lucky Am I’
First Baby Born Through Surrogacy Celebrates Her 40th Birthday: ‘How Lucky Am I’
Desiree AnelloSat, April 18, 2026 at 8:19 PM UTC
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Jill BrandCredit: TODAY/Youtube -
Jill Brand, the first baby born through gestational surrogacy, celebrated her 40th birthday on April 17
Her late father, Dr. Elliot Rudnitzky, proposed the idea of surrogacy in the 1980s after he and Jill’s mom, Sandy, lost a baby through IVF
“It's a story of creativity, perseverance, some chutzpah, luck and a lot of love,” she wrote of the story of her 1986 birth
The first baby born through surrogacy has turned 40.
On Friday, April 17, Jill Brand celebrated a milestone birthday that also marked the “first time in human history that a woman gave birth to a baby she had no genetic relationship to,” she told NBC News in a joint interview with her mom, Sandy.
“Honored to be featured on @nbcnewsnow with my Mommy to tell the story of how #gestationalsurrogacy came to be,” Jill wrote on Instagram alongside a clip of her recent television appearance. “It's a story of creativity, perseverance, some chutzpah, luck and a lot of love.”
“How lucky am I to have parents like that?” she added. “Here's to you, Daddy. Mom & I are keeping your legacy alive.”
Jill Brand and her mom, SandyCredit: TODAY/Youtube
While Jill, who now has three kids of her own, has kept much of her life out of the spotlight in hopes of leading a normal life, she and her mother decided to share their story with the world after her father, Dr. Elliot Rudnitzky, died last year.
“For the first year of my life, there was a little bit of publicity and a little bit of news around it, but then my mom really wanted a private life,” Jill explained to NBC News. “She always says, ‘I just wanted to enjoy you. I wanted to enjoy you and your sisters.’ ”
“I think he’s watching and I think he’s very, very happy,” Jill continued of her late father, after which Sandy added, “He’s probably saying, ‘It’s about time.’ ”
As for how Elliot became the “father of gestational surrogacy? Early on in their marriage, Sandy recalled thinking that it wasn’t fair for the cardiologist to marry her after she was told that she could not carry a child after having her fallopian tubes removed.
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“He always pretty much followed his parents' wishes,” she told NBC News. “In this case, and perhaps the only case in his life, he did rebel. He married me.”
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Jill Brand and her mom, SandyCredit: TODAY/Youtube
After adopting two daughters, Sandy and Elliot began to wonder if the IVF technology that was being developed at the time could help them conceive a biological child — and at first, it seemed to be working.
“The pregnancy was proceeding normally, then my uterus ruptured, and so I had an emergency C-section and a hysterectomy," she recalled. “Our baby Heather lived for 13 days and then she died. We were devastated after that.”
Three years after their loss, Elliot proposed the idea of using a surrogate while he was “shaving at his vanity” on an ordinary day.
“I said, ‘I think that's crazy. What doctor would be willing to do this?’ ” Sandy recounted. “He said, ‘We’ll find a doctor, we’ll find a way.' "
While dozens of doctors initially said no, bringing the possibility and morality of surrogacy into question, a doctor named Wulf Utian eventually decided that he was willing to explore the concept.
“He thought the proposal sounded interesting and really had a possibility of working, and so that was our breakthrough,” Sandy said. And when Jill was born in 1986, her mother deemed it “one of the most amazing days of my life.”
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
