'Hard to believe': The extraordinary first UK baby born from a womb transplant thanks to Scottish donor

A baby girl has made history as the first child in the UK to be born from a womb transplant.

Grace Davidson, 36, who lives in north London, but is originally from Scotland, received the organ – also called the uterus – from her older sister Amy in the UK’s first womb transplant in 2023.

The news gives hope to thousands of women born without a womb or whose womb fails to function.

Grace and Angus Davidson with baby Amy Isabel, and her aunt Amy. Grace, who received a womb in the UK's first womb transplant, has given birth to a baby girl. Picture: Joe Daniel/Womb Transplant UK/PA Wire

Now, following the huge success of the procedure, she has given birth to baby Amy Isabel, named after her aunt and a surgeon who helped perfect the technique.

Mrs Davidson, an NHS dietitian, and her husband Angus, 37, who works in finance, are over the moon with their new arrival.

Baby Amy was born by planned NHS Caesarean section on February 27 at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London.

Mrs Davidson said she felt “shock” when she first held her daughter, adding: “We have been given the greatest gift we could ever have asked for.”

Grace and Angus Davidson (front) with the hospital team at the birth of baby Amy Isabel Davidson. Picture: Womb Transplant UK/PA Wire

She said: “It was just hard to believe she was real. I knew she was ours, but it’s just hard to believe…

“Our family are just so happy for us. It sort of feels like there’s a completeness now where there maybe wasn’t before.”

Mrs Davidson was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH), a rare condition that affects around one in every 5,000 women, meaning they have an underdeveloped or missing womb.

However, the ovaries are intact and still function to produce eggs and female hormones, making conceiving via fertility treatment a possibility.

Before receiving the donated womb, Mrs Davidson and her husband underwent fertility treatment to create seven embryos.

Mrs Davidson then had surgery in February 2023 to receive the womb from her sister Amy Purdie, 42, a former primary school teacher who lives in Scotland and is mother to two girls aged ten and six.

Several months later, one of the stored embryos was transferred via IVF to Mrs Davidson.

Amy, who weighed 4.5lb, was delivered several weeks early in the planned 90-minute Caesarean section, to ensure a safe, hospital-based delivery.

Mrs Davidson and her baby stayed in hospital for about a week to establish breastfeeding.

The new mother said: “The first couple of weeks were tricky because she was so sleepy, and we were struggling to kind of keep her awake enough for her feed, but she’s doing really well.

“She had a bit of jaundice to start with, and she needed a bit of light therapy, but she’s a stronger feeder now, and she’s more alert.”

Mr Davidson said the moment his daughter arrived was very emotional. “She came out crying, and we were a bit worried she would be whisked off to an antenatal ward, but she’s been with us every minute of her life so we’re so grateful for that,” he said.

“It had been such a long wait. We’d been intending to have a family somehow since we were married, and we’ve kind of been on this journey for 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.

“The room was full of people who have helped us on the journey to actually having Amy.

“We had been kind of suppressing emotion, probably for ten years, and you don’t know how that’s going to come out – ugly crying it turns out!

“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.”

Mrs Davidson said the couple always had “a quiet hope” the womb transplant would be a success.

She added: “Lots of womb transplants fail in the first two weeks so even just to get to that point was amazing, and having my first period was really amazing, because it showed it was working.

“What helped us through the tough times was sort of thinking this is all going to be worth it… I’m so grateful, it’s given us so much.”

She said the couple “definitely” wanted to have another child.

Mrs Purdie, who lives in Scotland, was not at the birth but was only a phone call away. She said: “Watching Grace and Angus become parents has been an absolute joy and worth every moment.”

Mrs Purdie said she did not hesitate to think about donating her womb to her younger sister once the living donor transplant programme became a possibility.

“It was very natural,” Mrs Purdie said. “Because we had followed Grace on the plan of a deceased donor, we had gone on the journey with her.

“And then when she mentioned that there was this opportunity, immediately both me and my older sister, Laura, and our mum – we all said we would do it.”

Mrs Davidson was diagnosed as having no womb when she was 19 and found out about womb transplants at the same time. “It was very much at the research stages, but the consultant said this might be available in my lifetime,” she said. “I just sort of Googled it and found out there was a research team, and there was an email address, so I emailed them.

“We basically got recruited from 800 women down to 10, I think, and that was purely for the deceased donor trial.

“We were on that for maybe three years, and then the living donors really took off as a possibility.

“The team suggested to me that we might want to consider that. I think they thought we’d probably have a family sooner if we went down that road.”

The lead surgeons for the womb transplant were Professor Richard Smith, clinical lead at the charity Womb Transplant UK and consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and Isabel Quiroga, consultant surgeon at the Oxford Transplant Centre.