A woman who was born without a womb has given birth to her first child, marking a milestone for reproductive medicine in the UK. Grace Davidson, 36, received a womb transplant from her sister Amy Purdie in 2023 and delivered a baby girl, Amy, in February of this year.
The transplant was part of an ongoing clinical trial aiming to assess the viability of womb transplants as a treatment for women without a functioning uterus. Grace, who lives in north London, was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a condition that affects approximately one in 5,000 women and results in the absence or underdevelopment of the uterus.
Her daughter is the first baby in the UK to be born following a womb transplant. The operation itself took a team of more than 30 medical staff 17 hours to complete and was carried out at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. The donor, Grace’s sister Amy, had already completed her own family and volunteered for the procedure after initial plans for Grace’s mother to donate her uterus proved unworkable.
Speaking to the BBC, Grace described the moment she held her daughter as “overwhelming” and “surreal”. “We’d never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here,” she said. “It was really wonderful.”
She and her husband Angus, both originally from Scotland, had kept their identity private during the process but chose to speak publicly after the safe arrival of their daughter. They named her Amy in honour of the sister who made the pregnancy possible. Her middle name, Isabel, is a tribute to Isabel Quiroga, the transplant surgeon who led the procedure.
Grace’s pregnancy followed successful IVF using embryos stored before the transplant. She began menstruating just weeks after receiving the donor womb and became pregnant after her first round of treatment. Her daughter was delivered by Caesarean section at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in west London.
The transplant is not permanent. Grace is expected to have the uterus removed after a second child in order to stop taking immunosuppressant medication, which carries long-term health risks if continued indefinitely. The couple hope to begin trying for a second pregnancy once given medical clearance.
So far, four womb transplants have been carried out in the UK, three from deceased donors. The programme, led by a team at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, aims to complete 15 transplants. The surgeries have been funded by Womb Transplant UK, a charity headed by Professor Richard Smith, who has worked on womb transplantation for over two decades.
Around 15,000 women in the UK are estimated to be affected by uterine factor infertility. Of those, roughly a third were born without a womb. The birth of baby Amy could signal growing hope for people in this group who wish to carry children.
Amy Purdie, the donor, said she had no hesitation in offering her womb to her sister and never experienced the sense of loss that can accompany hysterectomy. “It was dramatic and immediate,” she said of the benefits to Grace. For Grace, the transplant has been life-changing. “It’s a huge act of sisterly love,” she said.
