In a remarkable medical milestone, a woman has become the first in the UK to give birth following a womb transplant.
Grace Davidson, 36, who was born without a uterus due to a rare condition, described the birth of her daughter as “the greatest gift we could ever have asked for” for her and her husband, Angus, 37.
Their five-week-old daughter has been named Amy Isabel – a tribute to Grace’s sister, Amy Purdie, who donated her womb during an eight-hour operation in 2023, and surgeon Isabel Quiroga, who helped refine the transplant technique.
Davidson gave birth to Amy Isabel via planned caesarean section on 27 February at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London. She admitted feeling overwhelmed when she first held her daughter. “It was just hard to believe she was real. I knew she was ours, but it’s just hard to believe,” she said.
The couple had always held “a quiet hope” that the transplant would allow them to start a family, but Davidson said it only truly felt real once their daughter arrived.
The success of the transplant offers renewed hope to women who are born without a womb or whose wombs do not function. In addition to Davidson’s case, three other womb transplants have been carried out in the UK using deceased donors, and doctors are hopeful that those recipients will also go on to have children.
Womb Transplant UK, the charity supporting the programme, has approval for 10 deceased donor and five living donor transplants. Although about 10 women are currently going through the approval process for the £25,000 procedure, hundreds more have expressed interest. The charity hopes that the NHS may eventually fund such operations.
The birth marks the culmination of 25 years of research led by Professor Richard Smith, clinical lead at Womb Transplant UK. Smith was present in the operating theatre when Amy Isabel, weighing 2.04kg (4.5lb), was born.
“I feel great joy actually, unbelievable – 25 years down the line from starting this research, we finally have a baby, little Amy Isabel. Astonishing, really astonishing,” Smith told PA Media.
Smith, a consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, described the journey as emotional for everyone involved. “There’s been a lot of tears shed by all of us in this process – really quite emotional, for sure. It is really something.”
Isabel Quiroga, consultant surgeon at the Oxford Transplant Centre, also spoke of her joy. “For me, it’s total joy, delight. I couldn’t be happier for Angus and Grace, what a wonderful couple. It was overwhelming actually, it remains overwhelming. It’s fantastic.”
Davidson, an NHS dietitian from north London, was diagnosed as a teenager with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a condition that affects around one in every 5,000 women. Women with MRKH are born with an underdeveloped or absent uterus, though their ovaries are usually healthy, allowing for the possibility of conception through fertility treatment.
Ahead of the transplant, Grace and Angus Davidson created seven embryos through fertility treatment, freezing them in preparation for IVF at a clinic in central London.
After the transplant surgery in February 2023, Davidson received a womb from her sister, Purdie, 42, who already had two daughters aged 10 and 6. Several months later, one stored embryo was transferred to Davidson, leading to the successful pregnancy.
Angus Davidson described the birth of their daughter as an intensely emotional experience. “Having waited such a long time, it’s kind of odd getting your head around that this is the moment where you are going to meet your daughter,” he said.
He recalled how the delivery room was full of the people who had supported them through the years. “We had been kind of suppressing emotion, probably for 10 years, and you don’t know how that’s going to come out – ugly crying, it turns out!” he said.
“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. But the lines between that and the love for our family and for Amy are very much blurred – it felt like a room full of love.
“The moment we saw her was incredible, and both of us just broke down in emotional tears.”
Purdie said donating her womb had been “an absolute joy” and that watching her sister and brother-in-law become parents made it “worth every moment” of her own experience.
During her pregnancy, Davidson took immunosuppressants to prevent her body from rejecting the transplanted womb. She has expressed a strong desire to have another child in the future.
Worldwide, more than 100 womb transplants have been performed, resulting in at least 50 babies being born. The first birth following a womb transplant took place in Sweden in 2014, when a 36-year-old woman gave birth to a son, Vincent, whom she described as “perfect”.
