A baby girl born to a mother using a donated womb has been hailed as a “miracle” by her thrilled parents.
Little Amy, who weighed just four-and-a-half pounds (2kg) when she was born in February, was carried by mum Grace Davidson, 36, who herself was born without a functioning uterus. Grace has Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, where the womb can be underdeveloped or non-existent, and in 2018 her mum offered to donate her uterus.
Unfortunately her mum’s organ wasn’t suitable, but Grace’s sister Amy Purdie volunteered to donate her own womb, having already had two children with her husband. Both sisters underwent pioneering 17-hour surgery in 2023 to transfer the womb to Grace, and just two weeks later, Grace experienced her very first period.
When she and husband Angus went through IVF, they conceived little Amy on their first round, and the baby girl was born via C-section in February – and named for the aunt who helped bring her into the world.
“I have always had a mothering instinct,” said Grace, “but for years I had been suppressing it because it was too painful to go there.”
The couple now want to have a second child using the embryos they still have in storage, and should they be lucky enough to conceive again, the donor womb will be removed after birth, as Grace has to take daily immunosuppressants to ensure her body doesn’t reject her sister’s uterus.
They are not the first to defy medical norms. Scott Parker, 23, became the first trans man to give birth in the UK after giving birth to daughter Sara on April 29, 2017. The graphic designer from Brighton fell pregnant after a one-night stand with a friend, and while the biological father did not want to be involved in his daughter’s life, Scott’s partner said at the time they wanted to adopt Sara.
Scott, who was born a girl but identifies as a man, had not yet started hormone replacement treatment when he conceived, and had put his medical transition on pause while pregnant. “I am the man I am meant to be and a parent. I want others to know they can do it too,” he said at the time. Scott praised his midwife team and the staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital for calling him ‘dad’ throughout his pregnancy and birth, and for using the gender-neutral title ‘Mx’ on his notes.
In January 2009, California mum Nadya Suleman gave birth to eight healthy babies in the US and was dubbed ‘Octomom’ in the resulting global media frenzy. The unemployed single mother was beset by criticism, especially when it emerged she already had six older children, but Nadya insisted she wasn’t an irresponsible parent.
“Everything I do revolves around my children,” she said. “That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family. I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I really lacked, I believe, growing up. And I personally believe that need to fill something inside that’s not there, the void, the feeling of emptiness, I think everyone has that.”
On this side of the pond, the famous Walton sisters in Liverpool defied the odds when all six of them survived their dangerous birth in 1983. The sextuplets – named Hannah, Lucy, Ruth, Sarah, Kate and Jenny – were born after Janet Walton and her husband Graham had fertility treatment, and Graham joked that a “sense of humour is vital” when it comes to raising so many children at once.
“My wife is so very organised, we had to be, changing nappies, feeding, sleeping, at all hours of the day and night,” he said in 2009. “There was so much to do and think about and there was never enough time. But all you can do is keep smiling and enjoy every minute of it.”
Nuala and Austin Conway also made history in 2009 when they welcomed their own sextuplets in Ireland when they were in their twenties. All six – Eoghan, Karla, Austin, Ursula, Shannon and Kerrie – were born in just five minutes by C-section and were 14 weeks premature. The couple spent £30,000 in the first year alone on nappies, washing powder and food, and after they were weaned the family’s groceries bill would run to £300 a week.
Sadly, the smallest of the babies, Kerrie Mae, died aged two months when she developed breathing difficulties. Speaking to the Mirror in 2012, mum Nuala said: “I feel so incredibly lucky and am overwhelmed with love for my other five children, but nothing ever replaces the one that you lost.
“To us, they will always be our sextuplets and when people ask about our five children, I always say there were six because we will never forget our daughter.”
Every year on the sextuplets’ birthday, the family visit Kerrie Mae’s grave and place flowers on it, and Nuala and Austin still talk about their lost daughter to their children. Nuala tragically lost her mum Theresa just a week after the siblings’ first birthday, compounding their sadness. “I wish she could see what little ladies and gentlemen they have turned into,” she said at the time.
On the other side of the scale, in 2009 Elizabeth Adeney became the oldest mum in the UK to give birth at the age of 66. Her son Jolyon – meaning ‘young at heart’ – was born following her IVF treatment in Ukraine, and Elizabeth hit headlines for going back to work just four weeks after his arrival by caesarean.
The NHS had refused to give the mum fertility treatment because she had already gone through menopause, so she had to travel abroad and use donor sperm to have him. Little Jolyon was born weighing 5lb 3oz, and Elizabeth later said: “It’s not physical age that is important – it’s how I feel inside. Some days I feel 39. Others, I feel 56.”
She took the title of UK’s oldest mum from Dawn Brooke, who in 1997 defied the odds to conceive naturally at the age of 59. She and husband Raymond kept their miracle birth quiet at the time, but spoke out when their son turned ten.
“People are generally not quite aware of the extreme good luck we had at our age,” said Raymond at the time. “We’re overjoyed to have our son. We’ve been hugely fortunate. He’s such a fantastic boy.” He added that their son – whose name has never been made public – was born by caesarean section on the island of Guernsey three months after his and Dawn’s wedding, and the unplanned pregnancy had come as “a bit of a shock”.
Meanwhile, Hannah Stibbles became the country’s most premature baby to survive when she was born in 2021 at 25 weeks gestation. Tiny Hannah weighed just 325g (11oz) when 17-year-old mum Ellie Paton needed a C-section, and spent the first weeks of her life in hospital. Doctors warned her parents that Hannah only had a 20 percent chance of survival, but after six weeks she was strong enough to breathe independently.
Hannah was eventually discharged, and when she was 20 months old, mum Ellie paid tribute to her little fighter. “She’s signed off her oxygen completely now, this time last year we didn’t think this day would ever come,” Ellie wrote. “From such a hard start in her life to no medical issues at all, she is really something special.”
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