Two women in Sweden gave birth to two healthy baby boys in November after receiving womb transplants from their own mothers, news.com.au reported.
One of the women, a 29-year-old from Sweden, was born without a womb, and the other woman, who is 34, had her womb removed while being treated for cancer during her 20s. The women’s names were not released.
“It’s an absolutely extraordinary gift,” Henrik Hagberg, fetal medicine professor at King’s College, told news.com.au. “It is probably the best thing you can do for your daughter.” According to The Telegraph, Hagberg was at the first birth.
To complete the procedure, doctors removed each daughter’s eggs, and fertilized and froze them. Then surgeons removed each mother’s womb in a 10-hour operation similar to a hysterectomy. The wombs were then transplanted into the daughters, and after a year, doctors thawed one of each woman’s embryos and implanted them in the wombs.
The first womb transplant baby was born in Sweden in October. The two new mothers were part of a group of nine women given experimental womb transplants, according to news.com.au. Seven of those women have now given birth.
“That’s a very good success rate for a new surgery like this,” the British Fertility Society’s Allan Pacey told The Daily Mail.
The two womb transplant babies were delivered via a Caesarean section about a month early.
According to the Daily Mail, some doctors are planning similar transplants using wombs from brain-dead women.
The mother of the first womb transplant baby received a womb donation from a 61-year-old friend who had gone through menopause. The 36-year-old woman, who was not named, learned at age 15 that she did not have a womb, according to The Telegraph.
She reportedly named her son Vincent, which means “to conquer,” in honor of the hurdle she overcame to become a mother.
“As soon as I felt this perfect baby boy on my chest, I had tears of happiness and enormous relief,” she said in October. “I felt like a mother the first time I touched my baby and was amazed that we finally did it. I have always had this large sorrow because I never thought I would be a mother— and now the impossible has become real.”
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