A woman born without a uterus gave birth last month to a baby using an implanted womb she got from a friend in her 60s, the BBC reports.
The baby, a boy born in September at 36 weeks gestation, was from one of 11 embryos produced from the woman’s working ovaries via IVF at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
After the IVF, doctors implanted a womb from a 61-year old friend donor who had gone through the menopause seven years prior.
Doctors gave the woman, who has asked for anonymity, drugs to suppress the immune system so her body wouldn’t reject the new womb.
A year after the transplant, doctors implanted the frozen embryos in the woman which eventually led to a pregnancy, medical journal The Lancent notes.
The baby’s father told the Associated Press his son was “amazing” adding “he’s no different from any other child, but he will have a good story to tell.”
This is welcome news for other women born without wombs and cancer patients who lose their functioning womb following treatment.
Before, their only option to have a genetic baby would have been gestational surrogacy.
This is not the first highly publicized womb transplant case.
Last year, a 22-year old Turkish woman, also born without a womb, got pregnant following a womb transplant from a dead donor, but unfortunately suffered a miscarriage.
No news whether she was able to eventually have a baby, if not by carrying it herself, through other means.
