Scottish woman Grace Davidson always knew she wanted to be a parent, but there was one major issue.

She was born without a functioning womb.

Her condition, known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, caused her to have functional ovaries but since she didn’t have a functional womb she was unable to menstruate or, sadly, bear the child that she so wished to have.

However, thanks to pioneering medical research, Grace and her husband Angus have now become first-time parents, at the ages of 36 and 37 respectively, with their baby Amy regarded as a medical miracle.

The impossible was made possible when Grace underwent a clinical trial in which her sister’s womb was transplanted into her body, in a seventeen hour procedure that saw 30 surgeons work on the two sisters.

Her sister Amy (the child’s namesake) already had two children, so she gladly donated her womb to her sister when she discovered that – unlike their mother – she was a match.

And just over two years after the successful transplant, baby Amy was born in February 2025, the first baby born as a result of a womb transplant in the UK – a life changing result for the parents who told the BBC how their dreams had been realized:

“It was quite overwhelming because we’d never really let ourselves imagine what it would be like for her to be here. It was really wonderful. I have always had a mothering instinct, but for years I had been suppressing it because it was too painful to go there.”

But the successful transplant has paved the way for other women too, with three further women having received womb transplant since Grace’s, as part of a clinical trial of fifteen.

The child was conceived thanks to IVF after the transplant had proven successful, with Grace’s first menstrual period occurring not long after the transplant.

Amy’s birth had a huge ripple effect, realizing the huge efforts of Professor Richard Smith from Imperial College Healthcare, for whom womb transplantation has been a twenty-year project, and whose pioneering charity – Womb Transplant UK – funded the transplant, with medical staff donating their time in the name of research.

Though Amy is not the first baby to be born after a womb transplant, with approximately 65 babies born across the world after 135 womb transplants, but she is the first in the UK, heralding a massive success story for Womb Transplant UK as Professor Smith continued in the BBC article:

“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.”

Since Amy’s successful birth, the happy parents are already planning their second child.

But their reason for such haste outlines some of the risks of the procedure. They need to be quick, as the immunosuppressants that Grace must take daily to ensure that the womb is not rejected mean that she is more likely to develop some types of cancer over the long term.

However, according to Isabel Quiroga – the lead surgeon for Grace’s transplant – these risks will be reduced as soon as the transplanted womb is removed from Grace’s body and she no longer needs to take the medication.

As such, it seems like for this couple at least, the benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

This is supported by Quiroga – after whom baby Amy takes her middle name, Isabel – who explained to the BBC that she saw the incredible results of the surgery first-hand:

“It was an incredible moment, full of joy – life-enhancing and life-creating – and you can’t have better than that.”

Right now Amy is just a baby, none the wiser about how much of a miracle she is.

But up and down the UK, women for whom motherhood seems a closed door are holding her arrival in their hearts, a glimmer of hope that one day parenthood will be a possibility for them, too.

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