Kelly Healey was just 30 when her daughter, teenager Skye Salter, 14, gave birth to her son Bailey in August, who is now three years old and has become Britain’s youngest grandmother.
Skye was living with her stepmother and father in Cranford, West London, when she took a pregnancy test and found out she was pregnant in 2018. She was rushed to West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, where she underwent an ultrasound, and doctors revealed that she had been pregnant for 36 weeks and four days.
The teenager was sᴇxᴜᴀʟʟʏ active, so she took the test as a precaution. Skye was left in sʜᴏᴄᴋ by the news, and doctors told her that an abortion was not an option because she found out about the pregnancy late.
Skye, who is now 17, recalls: “I was stunned. I had an intuition that I could be pregnant and so I suggested a test. Dad is a local guy my age.
I couldn’t believe it. There was the possibility of becoming a mom, and just a few weeks earlier, I had a physical and climbed uphill and downhill. Of course, the late knowledge that I was pregnant meant that ᴀʙᴏʀᴛɪᴏɴ was not an option.”
When she was on the ultrasound, she decided, “But I couldn’t do it anyway. Watching my baby’s heartbeat on the screen filled my heart with love. I knew from that moment on that I would always take second place and my little son first.”
When she learned that Skye was pregnant, Mom Healey offered her her love and support for what she had done, but the mother of five admitted she never expected to find out she would become a grandmother because she was still young.
In an interview, she said: “I never expected to find out that I would become a nanny while I was still in my 20s, but it didn’t make sense to yell at Skye about ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴀᴄᴇᴘᴛɪᴏɴ and safe sᴇx. What was done was done. All I could do was offer love and support. As a mom, you just deal with things like that.”
The youngest British grandmother said, “I act like I’m in my early 20s, so it’s a little weird for me to be a grandmother. My friends think it’s funny to have a grandson. He always replaces him with my son.”
Meanwhile, Healey has revealed that her mother does not feel ready to be a great-grandmother at just 48 years old.
“I think that makes her the youngest great-grandmother in Great Britain,” she said.