UK welcomes first baby girl born from womb transplant

A baby girl has become the first in the UK to be born from a womb transplant, after her aunt donated her uterus to her sister, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London announced on Tuesday. Amy was born on February 27, two years after her mother, Grace Davidson, received the transplant from her older sister, Amy Purdie. Grace, who suffers from Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, a rare condition that left her born without a functioning womb, had struggled with infertility for years. “We have been given the greatest gift we could ever have asked for,” Grace Davidson said, adding that she hopes womb transplants could become a viable option for other women in similar situations. Her husband, Angus Davidson, expressed his joy, saying, "We had been kind of suppressing emotion for 10 years... and you don’t know how that’s going to come out, ugly crying it turns out." The womb transplant was performed in February 2023 at the Oxford Transplant Centre, with Amy Purdie, 42, donating her womb. It was the first living-donor womb transplant in the UK. Professor Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecological surgeon, described the birth as the culmination of over 25 years of research into womb transplants. Since the first successful transplants in Sweden in 2013, more than 100 womb transplants have been carried out globally, resulting in around 50 healthy births.