On February 27, Grace Davidson, a 36-year-old woman from North London, gave birth to a baby girl named Amy Isabel at Queen Charlotte and Chelsea Hospital in London, according to the New York Post. This birth marks the first time in the United Kingdom that a baby has been born to a mother who received a womb transplant from a living donor.
According to The Independent, Grace Davidson was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare condition affecting about one in every 5,000 women, resulting in an absent or underdeveloped womb but with normal ovarian function. Diagnosed in her teenage years, Davidson faced the devastating reality that she could not carry a pregnancy despite having functioning ovaries.
"I have always had a maternal instinct. But I had suppressed it for years because it was very painful to try to talk about it," she said, according to BBC News.
Determined to become a mother, Davidson underwent womb transplant surgery in February 2023 at the Oxford Transplant Centre. The donor was her older sister, 42-year-old Amy Purdie, who had already given birth to two children and felt her family was complete.
"Amy's donation is a huge act of sisterly love," Davidson said.
The transplant surgery, which took 17 hours and involved a team of at least 30 doctors, was led by Professor Richard Smith, a consultant gynecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and surgeon Isabel Quiroga.
After the transplant, Davidson started menstruating for the first time two weeks later, which she described as "amazing" because it showed the transplant was working.
Several months later, one of Davidson's frozen embryos, created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) prior to the transplant, was implanted into her transplanted womb, leading to a successful pregnancy. She became pregnant on her first round of IVF after the transplant, having created seven embryos through IVF before the surgery.
Throughout her pregnancy, Davidson took immunosuppressant drugs to prevent her body from rejecting the transplanted womb. Due to concerns that labor could strain the transplanted womb, doctors decided to deliver the baby via planned cesarean section.
Baby Amy was born three weeks earlier than planned, weighing 2.04 kg. Davidson and her husband, Angus Davidson, named their daughter after her aunt, Amy, and gave her the middle name Isabel in honor of the surgeon, Dr. Isabel Quiroga, who co-led the transplant operation.
"The moment we saw her was incredible, and we both burst into tears," Davidson said. "It was quite overwhelming because we'd never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here," she added.
Holding her daughter for the first time was "incredible" and "surreal," she said, according to BBC News. "We have received the greatest gift we could have asked for," Davidson expressed.
"The room was just so full of love and joy and all these people that had a vested interest in Amy for incredible medical and science reasons," Angus Davidson said, according to The Guardian.
Professor Richard Smith, who has been researching womb transplants for over 25 years, was present at the birth and expressed his joy. "I have to say, I walked out of the room in Queen Charlotte's with tears streaming down my face. It's a good proportion of my career," he told The Times.
Dr. Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who co-led the transplant team, said she was "humbled" by the decision to name the baby after her. "For me, this day has given hope to many women with infertility due to uterine causes, which are around 10%," Dr. Quiroga said.
Since Davidson's procedure, three more women have undergone womb transplants from deceased donors in the UK. Globally, since the first successful womb transplant in Sweden in 2013, over 135 womb transplants have been carried out, resulting in around 65 live births.
Davidson and her husband hope to have a second child using the same donated womb once the medical team says it is the right time, as they have frozen embryos stored from their IVF treatments. After that, the womb will be removed so that Davidson can stop taking immunosuppressant drugs, which can have long-term health risks.
"I hope that going forward, this becomes a reality and provides an additional option for women who otherwise couldn't have their own child," Davidson said.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.