First baby from womb transplant is born in UK to mom without uterus
A British woman born without a uterus has given birth to a healthy baby girl — making the little bundle of joy the first baby in the UK to be born from a womb transplant.
Grace Davidson, 36, was diagnosed as a teenager with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome — a rare condition marked by the absence or underdevelopment of the uterus.
Determined to experience motherhood, Davidson underwent a womb transplant in 2023, receiving the organ from her older sister, Amy Purdie, who no longer needed it.
In February 2023, after undergoing an 18-hour surgery in Oxford, Davidson became the first woman in the UK to achieve a successful womb transplant.
She then went through IVF to receive one of the seven embryos she and her husband, Angus, had frozen prior to the transplant.
In February 2025, she gave birth to her daughter, Amy Isabel, via Caesarean section at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London.
The baby — named Amy after her aunt — was healthy, weighing 4.5 pounds at birth.
“It was just hard to believe she was real,” Davidson told The Times. “We have been given the greatest gift we could ever have asked for.”
“The moment we saw her was incredible, and both of us just broke down in emotional tears — it’s hard to describe, it was elation,” her husband said.
“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.”
It was the end of a long fertility journey for the Davidsons — and the crowning achievement for Professor Richard Smith, a consultant gynecological surgeon who founded the charity that funded the initial procedure, Womb Transplant UK.
“I have to say, I walked out of the room in Queen Charlotte’s [hospital] with tears streaming down my face. It’s quarter of a century — a good proportion of my career,” Smith told The Times.
“I feel great joy, actually, unbelievable — 25 years down the line from starting this research, we finally have a baby, little Amy Isabel.”
Amy’s middle name honors Isabel Quiroga — the other consultant surgeon for the womb transplant — who said she was “humbled” by the decision.
About 1 in 5,000 women around the world are born without a functioning uterus.
Globally, around 50 babies have been born following womb transplants since the first successful procedure in Sweden in 2014.
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) said it was delighted by the birth of this “miracle” baby and expected the medical milestone to offer hope to other women wishing to conceive.
