Martha Stewart is preparing to be the best grandma ever. Her daughter Alexis is using a surrogate to have a baby and Martha is “on cloud nine,” according to the National Enquirer.

According to family sources, 45-year-old Alexis, who struggled to conceive for years, is using a surrogate to help her become a mother. The baby is due in the spring.

“Martha is so excited to be a grandma,” a close family friend told The Enquirer. “But she is also happy because her only daughter’s dream is finally coming true.”

[National Enquirer, print edition, December 13, 2010]

Alexis first tried to have a baby at age 37, when she was married to John Cuti, but she put those plans on hold when Martha when to prison for securities fraud. Alexis and Cuti divorced in 2004, but Alexis still wanted a child and tried in vitro fertilization several times to no avail.

After jail, Martha went through more hardships. Her mother died in 2007, and she broke up with billionaire Charles Simonyi in 2008. Simonyi went on to marry a woman 32 years younger.

That’s when Alexis first began to consider using a surrogate to have a baby.

“Martha was bereft,” said the family friend. “She told Alexis that the only thing that could possibly pick her spirits up would be for her to have a child — and she didn’t care how she did it!”

…To find her surrogate, Alexis was helped by a family attorney and chose a married woman in her late 30s who lives in rural Pennsylvania, a four-hour drive from Martha’s daughter in New York City. The woman has already been a surrogate twice before, says the family friend.

“Alexis is about to burst with excitement. She speaks to the woman regularly to see how she is progressing, because she wants to be involved in the whole process,” the family friend continued. “She wants to be a hands-on mom from the womb.”

Martha, 69, has been pushing for grandchildren for years, say insiders.

Alexis once told a reporter: “My mom’s just desperate. She has wanted grandchildren forever. She’s always like, ‘For my birthday, I would like you to be pregnant.’ And I’m like, ‘Me, too!'”

[National Enquirer, print edition, December 13, 2010]

No word on who provided the sperm that fertilized Alexis’s egg. According to Wikipedia, surrogacy is illegal in New York but legal in Pennsylvania.

This might be a little creepy on Martha’s part if Alexis wasn’t just as anxious for the baby too.

Alexis currently co-hosts the show Whatever with Alexis and Jennifer on the Hallmark network. Martha also recently moved The Martha Stewart Show to Hallmark.

Expect to see hand-made rattles and baby bonnets on future episodes of Martha. She already has some really cute puppets made from washcloths on her Web site.

Header image is from 2006, credit: PRPhotos