Grace Davidson, 36, from north London, received the organ – also called the uterus – from her older sister, Amy, in the UK’s first womb transplant in 2023
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Mrs Davidson was born with a condition called MRKH, a rare condition that affects around one in every 5,000 women, meaning they have an undeveloped or even missing womb.
00:15However, the ovaries are intact and still function to produce eggs and female hormones, making conceiving via fertility treatment a possibility.
00:27Before receiving the donated womb, Mrs Davidson and her husband underwent fertility treatment to create seven embryos, which were frozen for IVF in central London.
00:40Mrs Davidson then had surgery in February of 2023 to receive the womb from her 42-year-old sister, Amy Purdy, a former primary school teacher who is mother to two girls aged 10 and 6.
00:56Several months later, one of the stored embryos was transferred via IVF to Mrs Davidson.
01:03Amy, who weighs 4.5 pounds, was delivered several weeks early in the planned 90-minute cesarean section to ensure a safe hospital-based delivery at Queen Charlotte and Chelsea Hospital in London.
01:19I have to say that the moment of birth, when you're performing the surgery and you have to get into that zone, you have to treat this as any other surgery that you're doing.
01:33It was a particularly special moment because we handed, knowing that Amy was premature, but handing that baby over, you make initial assessment to make sure that the baby is crying and moving and doing all the things we expect,
01:48but handing that baby over to the mother and we do a particular thing when we lower the drapes and actually hand that baby directly.
01:54So the first skin that the baby touches is the mother's, and that's such a beautiful, and we had our neonatal team all around so that just to help support that in process.
02:06And then when I could see, when that initial moment of happiness was there, I could see then that Amy, baby Amy, was being taken over and looked at by the neonatologist.
02:15And I felt my eyes have a little bit of water and I thought I had to pull myself together and just say, no, we need to carry on and carry on with the surgery.
02:24But it was a really, really precious and wonderful moment to be able to be part of.