A 36-year-old Scottish woman, Grace Davidson, welcomed her daughter in February after a successful womb transplant two years ago. Grace Davidson was born without a functioning uterus and got her sister’s womb in 2023, which was then the only successful womb transplant in the UK.

Grace gave birth to her first child in February, two years after her pioneering operation. The baby was named Amy after Grace’s sister who donated her womb.

Holding baby Amy – who weighed just over two kilos (four and a half pounds) – for the first time was “incredible” and “surreal”, new mum Grace says.

“It was quite overwhelming because we’d never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here,” she says. “It was really wonderful.”

Grace and Angus, 37, who live in north London but are originally from Scotland, are hoping to conceive a second child with the transplanted womb. The couple initially kept the news a secret, but now that Amy has arrived safely, they are speaking to the BBC about their “little miracle”.

The surgical team informed the BBC that since Grace’s transplant, they had performed three more womb transplants using deceased donors.  Grace was born with MRKH syndrome, a rare disorder in which the womb is absent or undeveloped but the ovaries function properly.

Prior to surgery both sisters had counselling. Grace and Angus also had fertility treatment and still have several embryos in storage. Grace says she was given the option of surrogacy or adoption, but carrying her own baby felt “really important”.

“I have always had a mothering instinct,” she says, “but for years I had been suppressing it because it was too painful to go there.”

In 2014, Sweden welcomed the first baby born as an outcome of a womb transplant in the world. Since then, over 135 similar transplants have been performed in more than a dozen countries, including the United States, China, France, Germany, India, and Turkey.  Approximately 65 infants have been born.

Originally scheduled for late 2019, the sisters’ transplant operation was delayed by several years because of the Covid pandemic. It took a team of over 30 medics almost 17 hours to remove Amy’s womb and transplant it into Grace in February 2023.

Isabel Quiroga, the surgeon who led the transplant team at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, says although the procedure carried risks for both sisters, it was “life-enhancing and life-creating – and you can’t have better than that.”

Amy said she did not feel the feeling of loss that other women do after a hysterectomy because her sister had “dramatic” and instant advantages.  Grace had her first period two weeks after the transplant and became pregnant on the first attempt at IVF.

It was “incredible” to feel her baby’s first kick, she says, adding the entire pregnancy had been “really special”. Baby Amy was born by Caesarean section at Queen Charlotte’s hospital in west London on 27 February.

“It was an incredible moment, full of joy,” says surgeon Isabel Quiroga.Grace and Angus said they hope to have a second child as soon as the medical staff determines it is time.

The donated womb will be removed following the birth of the second kid. This will allow Grace to discontinue the daily immunosuppressive medications she is presently taking to guarantee her body does not reject her sister’s womb. Taking these treatments can increase the risk of getting certain malignancies, especially if used over time – however surgeon Isabel Quiroga says these risks should revert to normal once the womb is removed.

Prof Richard Smith, a gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare who headed the organ retrieval team, has been exploring womb transplantation for over 20 years.

He expresses his team’s delight with the birth of Amy.

“I’m not often short of words but when the baby came out I was speechless – there were a lot of tears in the theatre that day.

“The whole thing is astonishing and incredibly moving,” Prof Smith adds.

He believes Amy’s birth will give hope to many of the 15,000 women of reproductive age in the UK who do not have a functional uterus, with approximately 5,000 born without a womb.

Mr. Smith runs Womb Transplant UK, a charity that paid for Grace’s transplant operation through the NHS.  The entire medical personnel donated their time for free.

He told the BBC that perhaps ten women have embryos in storage or are undergoing fertility treatment, which is required before being considered for womb transplantation.  Each transplant costs roughly £30,000, he says, and the organisation has the money to do two more.

The surgical team has received approval to undertake 15 womb transplants as part of a clinical trial, five with living donors and ten with deceased donors.  No information has been released on the three women who have already gotten wombs from deceased donor organs.  According to NHS Blood and Transplant, families are asked for further approval for such uncommon donations.

Baby Amy’s father, Angus, says he and Grace will never be able to thank his wife’s sister enough for enabling them to become parents. It was an “absolute no brainer” that they would name Amy after her aunt, Angus says.

The baby’s middle name is Isabel, after the surgeon who oversaw the womb transplantation team. Grace’s relationship with her sister has become stronger since the birth of Amy.

“It was incredibly difficult to let her do that for me,” she says, “it’s a huge act of sisterly love.”