So many women are born without a uterus or just can’t have children and now there’s hope that they too will someday become birth mothers. A 26 year old woman named Lindsey became the first American woman to receive a uterus transplant two weeks ago and she is hopeful that someday she will be able to birth her own child.
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Speaking at a morning news conference, Lindsey said that although she and her husband have adopted 3 kids, she has still longed to give birth to her own child.
The Cleveland Clinic doctors, which did the transplant will be doing 9 more uterus transplants as part of a research study. The donated uteruses will come from deceased organ donors, just like in Lindsey’s case, which came from a deceased woman in her 30’s.
“Our first transplant took place on Feb. 24, and our patient is doing very well,” Dr. Andreas Tzakis, program director of the Transplant Center at Cleveland Clinic, said during the news conference.
Lindsey still has some time before she can get pregnant, at least one year, if not more. “A uterine transplant is not just about moving a uterus from here to there. It’s about having a healthy baby,” Dr. Rebecca Flyckt, an ob/gyn surgeon at Cleveland Clinic, said at the news conference. “That goal is still a couple of years away.”
Lindsey had six to 10 of her eggs harvested, fertilized with her husband’s sperm, and frozen. After a year, these embryos will be implanted in her transplanted uterus, and she hopes to give birth by cesarean delivery nine months later.
After that, she can wait a year and try to have another child. After two pregnancies, the transplanted uterus will be removed or allowed to wither and disappear on its own, her doctors said.
The doctors said they are putting a limit on how long the uterus remains in the body because women have to take powerful drugs to prevent the body from rejecting the uterus, and they do not want women to have to take these drugs their entire life.
Although this is the first U.S. uterus transplant, the technique was pioneered in Sweden. As of last September, nine transplants have been performed, resulting in five pregnancies and four births. The children born to these women are all doing well, the Cleveland Clinic researchers said during the news conference.
For more on uterus transplants, visit the Cleveland Clinic.