The downside: numerous tests, around eight hours of surgery, five days in hospital and weeks of painful recovery. The upside: allowing a woman to experience the indescribable joy of carrying their own baby.
So, would you donate your womb to a stranger?
Plenty of women would, it seems. After the news broke in 2023 that the UK’s first womb transplant had taken place, ‘hundreds’ of women were moved enough to get in touch with Womb Transplant UK, the charity funding the operation, to offer their own womb to another.
Following today’s pictures of the recipient of that womb, Grace Davidson cuddling her baby daughter (made possible after Grace’s older sister Amy donated her womb), the team now expect to hear from many more. ‘We were inundated with women who contacted us who’ve had children and want to let other women experience that joy for themselves,’ says Professor Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, one of the two surgeons who led the 17-hour transplant op.
The women who have got in touch so far ‘are of all ages’, adds Isabel Quiroga, a consultant in transplantation and endocrine surgery at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford, the other surgeon.
There have been around 135 womb transplants carried out around the world since the first successful operation in Sweden in 2014 – and most have been donated by live relatives.
It’s not unprecedented to give an organ to someone you don’t know; each year around 100 living donors donate a kidney to a stranger in the UK.
The checklist for womb donations include being aged 18 to 50 (to ensure the womb is healthy and able to carry a child; after menopause the womb starts to shrink), and the woman must have completed her own family. Then there are tests to check for infection, which might prevent an embryo implanting, as well as checks to ensure the blood types are a match.
The UK’s first womb transplant recipient Grace Davidson (left) holding her daughter, with her donor sister Amy
A potential donor must also undergo psychological checks. Then there are also obviously the risks of the major operation.
In February 2023, mother-of-two Amy Purdie, 42, donated her womb to her sister Grace to make her the first UK recipient.
And while she told Good Health she sees it as ‘a privilege’ to help her sister (which even now she becomes emotional discussing), she admits the surgery itself and the impact on her family was ‘traumatising’, and there are elements of the experience she has still yet to properly process.
While the procedure is similar to a radical hysterectomy (surgery to remove the womb in women with cervical cancer), what makes this different is that the womb and tiny connecting blood vessels must be kept in perfect condition to be transplanted.
The other option is to use a deceased donor. The Mail can reveal that three unnamed women in the UK have received a transplanted womb this way in the last two years.
Professor Smith says the aim is that at least seven more will be done this way over the next three years, as part of a clinical trial called INSITU.
The hope is that if successful, the NHS will then offer this type of transplant to women, using deceased donor organs. But if you or your loved one dies, your womb won’t be automatically offered for transplant. Currently adults are automatically opted in to organ donation, unless they register to opt out. However, this applies only to life-saving organs, says Miss Quiroga: ‘It would never be presumed consent with this [a womb].’
Whether from a live or deceased donor, a womb transplant is not an easy option for the recipient.
In February 2023, mother-of-two Amy Purdie, 42, right, donated her womb to her sister Grace
Grace and Angus Davidson with the hospital team at the birth of baby Amy
For Grace, to achieve her longed-for dream of motherhood – she wants one more child – she’ll endure four major operations: one to put the womb in, two caesareans, and then another operation to remove the womb.
The removal is necessary to minimise the time the recipient takes immunosuppressant medication, to reduce the risk of her body rejecting and attacking the transplanted womb. These drugs increase the risk of infections and cancer, so the plan is for Grace to have the womb transplanted for a maximum of five years.
Womb Transplant UK wants to perform a total of 11 more womb transplants over the next three years.
A lot of what happens next depends on money. It costs £30,000 to do a womb transplant involving a live donor and £25,000 with a deceased donor (for theatre and other costs; the medical staff do their work for free).
Womb Transplant UK needs another £500,000 to complete the planned total of 15. It has already spent £125,000 on the four transplants so far.
Remarkably such a major medical breakthrough has happened in part thanks to large individual donations, but also thanks to cake sales and sponsored walks.
Professor Smith, a father of four, says: ‘We have never succeeded in obtaining a mainstream research grant for our work, which is why we set up the charity – and it is thanks to people’s generosity that we have got this far.
‘The reason I kept going with this programme – it has taken over 26 years to get to this point – is because of the women I see in
my clinic who are grievously suffering [as a result of having no viable womb]. Until now, they faced either adoption or surrogacy, but this gives them the chance to have their own biological baby – and that is absolutely priceless.’
