Five womb transplants have been performed in the UK through Womb Transplant UK, with two from living donors and three from deceased donors, and two babies have been born from deceased-donor procedures.

Deceased-donor womb donation is a separate research pathway requiring explicit family consent and is not covered by standard organ donation or deemed consent; families are approached specifically about womb donation.

The program’s pregnancy cases, including Hugo, rely on the consent of donor families and a team effort to support pregnancies.

A consultant obstetrician and a team of over 30 expert staff monitored and delivered the baby, underscoring the highly collaborative work behind womb transplant pregnancies.

Key figures include team leads Professor Richard Smith, Miss Isabel Quiroga, and obstetrician Bryony Jones, with donor families expressing grief tempered by the life-saving gift.

Grace Bell, diagnosed with MRKH in adolescence, received a womb transplant in 2024 at the Oxford Transplant Centre after fertility treatment, enabling the possibility of conception.

Bell’s transplant followed by IVF/embryo procedures at a London clinic, marking a first-person case within the European context of deceased-donor womb transplants.

Hugo’s birth and an earlier living-donor case highlight that MRKH women can pursue fertilization and birth via womb transplantation.

Medical teams stress honesty about limited global experience with uterine transplants while leveraging transferable skills from other organ transplants to manage pregnancies.

Hugo’s birth demonstrates that girls and young women without a womb can carry their own child, though the donor has no genetic link to the baby.

Bell, unable to carry a pregnancy due to MRKH, learned early she wouldn’t bear her own child and later had a donor womb transplanted, enabling her to conceive.

Both mothers, Grace Powell and Grace Davidson, have MRKH syndrome with functioning ovaries, which supports fertility treatment alongside womb transplantation.