A baby boy is the first in the UK to be born after a womb transplant from a deceased donor, a development doctors say could offer hope to women born without a womb.

Grace Bell, in her 30s and from Kent, was born with MRKH syndrome, a condition in which a woman is born without a viable womb. She does not have periods but has normal ovaries.

At 16, she was told she would not be able to carry her own child.

As reported by the BBC, Bell’s womb transplant took 10 hours and was carried out at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford in June 2024.

Several months later, the couple underwent IVF treatment, followed by embryo transfer, at The Lister Fertility Clinic in London.

Her son, Hugo, was born just before Christmas 2025 at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in west London, weighing nearly 7lbs. He is now 10 weeks old.

Bell said: “It was simply a miracle. I remember waking up in the morning and seeing his little face, with his little dummy in, and it felt like I needed to wake up from a dream.

“It was just incredible.”

Bell and her partner Steve Powell paid tribute to the donor and her family.

Bell said: “I think of my donor and her family every day and pray they find some peace in knowing their daughter gave me the biggest gift: the gift of life. A part of her will live on forever.”

The successful transplant is one of 10 deceased donor womb transplants taking place as part of a UK clinical research trial.

Three have already been carried out, but Hugo is the first baby born.

In early 2025, a baby called Amy was born through the first living womb donation in the UK, at the same London hospital.

Her mother received her older sister’s womb in a transplant operation in January 2023. Five further womb transplants from close living relatives are planned.

Consultant gynaecologist Prof Richard Smith, from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, who began researching womb transplantation more than 25 years ago and was present at Hugo’s birth, said “a huge team of people” had been involved, from the transplant operation to embryo transfer and delivery.

Bell and Powell gave their son the middle name Richard in tribute to Smith, who also founded the charity Womb Transplant UK.

The couple may decide to have a second baby, after which surgeons plan to remove the transplanted womb.

This is to spare Bell from taking a lifetime of strong drugs to prevent the immune system attacking the transplanted organ.

Transplant surgeon and joint team leader Isabel Quiroga said she was “delighted” by Hugo’s birth and described it as a breakthrough for organ transplantation in the UK.

“Very few babies have been born in Europe as a result of their mothers receiving a womb from a deceased donor,” she said.

“Our trial is seeking to discover whether this procedure could become an approved and regular treatment for some of the increasing number of women of child-bearing age who do not have a viable womb.

Smith said the birth showed that girls and young women told they did not have a womb could now have hope of carrying their own child.

A baby born following a womb transplant from a deceased donor has no genetic link to the donor.

More than 100 womb transplant operations have been performed worldwide and more than 70 healthy babies have been born as a result.

Donating a womb for transplant differs from donating other organs, such as kidneys or a heart, as it requires a specific request to families who have already agreed to organ donation.

The donor’s parents, who wish to remain anonymous, said they felt “tremendous pride” in the legacy left by their daughter. She also donated five other organs, which were transplanted into four people.

“Through organ donation, she has given other families the precious gift of time, hope, healing and now life,” her family said.

A second pregnancy alters the female brain in ways distinct from a first, according to research examining how motherhood affects brain structure and function.

The study tracked 110 women using repeated brain scans. Some became mothers for the first time, others had a second child, while a third group remained childless, allowing researchers to identify pregnancy-related brain changes.

During a first pregnancy, the greatest changes occurred in the default mode network, a brain system involved in self-reflection and social processes. During a second pregnancy, this network changed again, but less strongly.

Instead, a second pregnancy was associated with more changes in brain networks linked to directing attention and responding to stimuli, functions that may be useful when caring for more than one child.

Each pregnancy produced both shared and distinct effects on the brain, with patterns differing between first and second pregnancies.

Elseline Hoekzema, head of the Pregnancy Brain Lab at Amsterdam UMC, said: “With this, we have shown for the first time that the brain not only changes during the first pregnancy, but also during a second. During a first and second pregnancy, the brain changes in both similar and unique ways. Each pregnancy leaves a unique mark on the female brain.”

Milou Straathof, a researcher who analysed the data, said: “It appears that during a second pregnancy, the brain is more strongly altered in networks involved in reacting to sensory cues and in controlling your attention. These processes may be beneficial when caring for multiple children.”

The researchers also found a link between brain changes and the bond between mother and child, which was more pronounced during a first pregnancy than a second. They also observed associations between structural brain changes and peripartum depression, a form of depression that can occur during pregnancy or after birth, in both first and second pregnancies.

This provides the first evidence that changes in the cortex, the brain’s outer layer, during pregnancy are linked to maternal depression.

For women who became mothers for the first time, this link was especially visible after childbirth. For women having their second child, it was particularly apparent during pregnancy.

The researchers said: “This knowledge can help to better understand and recognise mental health problems in mothers. It is important that we understand how the brain adapts to motherhood.

They added that the findings could support better care for mothers, including the prevention and treatment of postnatal depression. Although most women experience pregnancy once or multiple times, scientists are only beginning to understand how it affects the brain.

More than a dozen fertility patients have won a High Court battle to save their embryos, eggs and sperm from destruction after paperwork mistakes.

The ruling followed errors that meant patients did not renew consent to store their biological material within the 10-year window required by law.

In some cases, fertility clinics failed to notify those affected.

Lawyers for 15 groups affected by the errors, including some former cancer patients, asked the court in London to declare it would be lawful for the embryos or cells to remain in storage, despite consent expiring in June 2025.

In an unusual move, the application was unopposed, with no objections from the clinics, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority or the health secretary.

Mrs Justice Morgan ruled that it would be lawful in 14 of the 15 cases for the material to continue to be stored and used. She said laws around human fertilisation and embryology were “unbending” but added that “the rigidity of the scheme is not rigidity for its own sake”.

She continued: “It is surely consent that is important, not consent by an immutable date.

“I find it hard to conclude that parliament intended the possibility of parenthood should be removed by the ticking of a clock, not in the cliched phrase, the ticking of the biological clock, but by the ticking of the clock beyond midnight of the day when existing consent expires, whatever might be the circumstances.”

Under the law, fertility clinics need written consent from clients every 10 years to continue storing biological material.

The rules are intended to prevent cells being kept or used without people’s knowledge or permission.

Because of delays and difficulty accessing fertility treatment during the pandemic, the law allowed a two-year extension, meaning people using the service on 1 July 2020 were granted extra time. Confusion caused by the extension meant some clinic users were not notified when they needed to renew consent, so it lapsed.

In the one case where the judge ruled against the request, the circumstances were legally different.

Morgan said the pair involved had not originally consented to an embryo being stored, but one had been retained accidentally and they now wished to use it.

She said: “There was never, on their case, a consent to renew.

“To be permitted to take advantage of the storage of the embryo which they say ‘contradicted’ their express wishes because the clinic acted on the wrong consent form to change their mind is not in my judgment renewing consent. It is a change of consent.”