On Friday, doctors at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas announced that late last month, they had delivered the first United States-born baby born to a woman who’d had a uterus transplant, BuzzFeed News reports.
The baby boy’s mother, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was part of a clinical trial at Baylor that began last year in which a team of Dallas doctors became the first-ever doctors in the U.S. to successfully complete uterine transplant surgeries — which had previously been successful only in Sweden. The baby was reportedly delivered late last month via a scheduled C-Section, and was born healthy.
BREAKING: Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas Announces First Baby Born in United States to Mother Who Received #UterusTransplant. pic.twitter.com/Lp0RJmuRvj
— Baylor Scott & White (@bswhealth) December 1, 2017
So far, doctors at Baylor have completed eight transplants from both living and deceased donors, three of which have failed. Women who participated in the trial and received the uterus transplants had a condition called absolute uterine factor infertility, meaning they were previously incapable of carrying a child, or did not have uteruses altogether. Many lived their entire lives thinking they would never be able to carry children. Baylor has confirmed that there is another woman in the trial who is currently pregnant.
“We’ve been preparing for this moment for a very long time,” Dr. Liza Johannesson, an ob-gyn and uterus transplant surgeon at Baylor, told Time. “I think everyone had tears in their eyes when the baby came out. I did for sure.”
The living donor of the uterus was Taylor Siler, a 36-year-old Dallas-area registered nurse who had already had two boys of her own, and had decided with her husband that they were finished having children.
“I have family members who struggled to have babies, and it’s not fair,” Siler told Time. “I just think that if we can give more people that option, that’s an awesome thing.”
Baylor has clarified that uterus transplants are not necessarily a replacement for adoption or surrogacy, but another option for women dealing with infertility — and if they prove to be successful in the future, they could offer hope to thousands of women who could otherwise never get pregnant.