In a historic medical breakthrough, a baby girl named Amy has become the first child in the UK to be born from a womb transplant, after her mother received a donated uterus from her sister.
Amy was delivered on February 27 at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London, two years after her mother, Grace Davidson, underwent a successful womb transplant. The life-changing procedure was made possible through the selfless donation of Grace’s older sister, Amy Purdie.
“We have been given the greatest gift we could ever have asked for,” said Grace, who was born without a functioning womb due to a rare condition known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome.
Now 36, Grace had long faced the heartbreaking reality of being unable to carry her child—until her sister, a mother of two herself, stepped forward to give her that chance.
Expressing hope for others in similar situations, Grace added, “Going forward this could become a wonderful reality, and provide an additional option for women who would otherwise be unable to carry their child.”
Her husband, Angus Davidson, reflected on the deeply emotional moment of their daughter’s birth: “The room was full of people who have helped us on the journey to actually having Amy,” he told the Press Association. “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.”
The womb transplant was performed in February 2023 at the Oxford Transplant Centre, part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It marked the first procedure of its kind in the UK.
Professor Richard Smith, the consultant gynaecological surgeon who co-leads the UK living donor womb transplant programme, hailed Amy’s birth as a landmark moment in British medical history.
“It is the culmination of over 25 years of research,” Smith said, underscoring the scientific dedication and human generosity that made the birth possible.
The groundbreaking case brings new hope to women with MRKH and other conditions that prevent pregnancy, opening a new chapter in fertility treatment and transplant medicine in the UK.
