On a recent visit back to her home town of Rainham in Kent, Lauren Fowler bumped into an old school friend who took one look at her and gasped.
‘She said, “Oh my goodness, how on earth can you be pregnant?”,’ recalls Lauren, 37, who works in marketing for a recruitment firm.
Lauren had confided to her when they were still at school that she, like thousands of women in the UK, was born without a womb.
‘I didn’t want my friend to think everything I had ever told her about myself was a lie, so I had to tell her the truth,’ says Lauren.
And the truth, as Good Health can exclusively reveal, is that, in October, Lauren will become only the third woman in the UK to give birth following a womb transplant.
On May 11 last year, Lauren’s sister Kelly Jagga, aged 40 (a mother to Ashley, 13, Louis, nine, and Sophie, 11), gave Lauren ‘the most amazing gift’, undergoing hours of surgery – and weeks of painful recovery – to donate her womb to her so she could experience pregnancy, something that she feared would always be beyond her reach.
‘It is something I never actually thought would happen for me,’ says Lauren, who lives in Chelmsford, Essex, with her fiancé David Funnell, 39, an associate director at a recruitment firm.
‘I’m still struggling with imposter syndrome. I keep thinking, “Can this really be happening to me?”,’ says Lauren, rubbing her 24-week bump. ‘I want this so, so much and part of me is still scared that it will go wrong.’
This picture of Lauren Fowler, 37, is the first time a UK womb transplant recipient has been photographed during pregnancy
Her fear is understandable. To get to this stage, she has faced many challenges. At one point, Lauren was rushed to hospital, with fears she might not survive. While the transplant – which took 11 hours in total to carry out – was successful, weeks later Lauren developed a rare, life-threatening complication.
Scar tissue from the surgery had gummed together 50cm of her bowel, causing an obstruction. She needed eight hours of emergency surgery and was so unwell that she spent two months in hospital.
‘I could go through the transplant time and time again, but that bowel obstruction almost finished me,’ says Lauren. ‘I shed 10kg in weeks and was so skinny and weak that I wasn’t sure I could fight back.’ But Lauren is adamant that feeling her baby – a boy – kicking and growing inside her makes it all worthwhile.
Recalling how she had first been told about her condition, Lauren says: ‘I had always thought children would be part of my future, and to be told at the age of 15 that I didn’t have a womb was like a bomb going off in my life plans.
‘I was always upbeat that somehow I would find a way. But, honestly, I still can’t take it in that I had the operation – to think I am going to have a baby seems mad.’
Lauren’s pregnancy is a life’s dream for her, but it might also help to make womb transplants an option for countless other women.
In February 2023, Grace Davidson made history – becoming the first woman in the UK to have a womb transplant, in this case donated by her sister. Grace’s daughter Amy Isabel was born in February last year.
Months later, Grace Bell gave birth to her son Hugo – the first British baby to be born following a womb transplant from a deceased donor.
These children have not only filled their parents’ lives with joy, their births are furthering medical science. Their mothers are part of a research trial to establish that womb transplants can be done and to make the case for them being offered on the NHS.
The aim is that womb transplants will become an option for the 15,000 women in this country who, like Lauren, have Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, where the womb does not develop at all or is a fraction of the normal size, or who have had their womb removed because of a disease such as cancer.
The trial will involve 15 transplants in total. Two with live donors (Grace and Lauren) and three involving deceased donors (one of which was Grace Bell’s transplant) have already taken place.
‘We have another two with living donors ready to have their transplants in the autumn or early next year and five deceased donation patients listed,’ says Professor Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, one of the surgeons who has co-led all of the womb transplant operations (carried out at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford).
Professor Smith who founded the charity Womb Transplant UK, which is overseeing and funding the trial, is certain the transplants will become available on the NHS.
‘If a health economist was to assess the cost of the op versus the benefit to society of having a child who can go on to pay taxes, there is no doubt that womb transplants will be made available on the NHS.
‘And that’s aside from the major benefit for these women.’
Lauren, left, with sister Kelly two days after the transplant last year. Kelly, aged 40, underwent hours of surgery – and weeks of painful recovery – to donate her womb
Lauren poses with her ultrasound photos. She now has scans every two weeks as hers is designated a high-risk pregnancy
The demand is there: Professor Smith’s clinic is inundated with women requesting a womb transplant, while the charity itself has been approached by more than 500. The team hopes to extend the programme soon to use altruistic donations, where women donate their wombs to recipients they don’t know, as with donated kidneys.
This would make it easier for women who don’t have someone willing to give them their womb (which, like any donated organ, needs to be in good condition, and ideally from a younger pre-menopausal woman).
However, some argue that as women could use a surrogate to carry a baby, womb transplants are a waste of resources.
Professor Smith says this misses the point. ‘If you are orthodox Jewish or Muslim you often are not allowed to use a surrogate. Plus surrogacy does not give women a chance to carry a baby, and for some – not all – that is vitally important, it’s part of being a mother.’
Currently the cost – £35,000 for a transplant involving a deceased donor and £40,000 for a living one, which covers the NHS charges for using their theatres and premises, while the medical staff give their time for free – is met by the charity, but Professor Smith admits that the funding ‘is and always has been hand-to-mouth’.
The team’s research into transplants of just the womb lining (rather than the whole structure) to help women with Asherman syndrome – where the womb lining is covered in scar tissue, making it difficult for an egg to implant – is on hold due to a lack of resources.
However, the ongoing trial is already throwing up incidental but potentially useful findings. Lauren has experienced heavy periods since her transplant (having never had a period before) – just as her sister did.
‘And that’s interesting because the perceived wisdom has always been that heavy periods are actually due to the impact of hormones such as prostaglandins, but the experience of Lauren suggests it might actually be to do with the anatomy or structure of the womb itself,’ says Professor Smith. While he stresses it’s only one case, he says it may help explain why treatments ‘for heavy periods don’t work for all, because there may be multiple reasons for them’.
Lauren strongly believes in the need for womb transplants. ‘The day I found out I had no womb, my whole world turned on its head,’ she says.
It came to light after investigations – including a scan – to uncover why her periods had not yet started. She did have ovaries that released an egg each month but the absent womb meant these were simply re-absorbed back into her body.
‘My plans to be a midwife changed there and then. It would be too upsetting to deliver other babies knowing I couldn’t have one,’ says Lauren. ‘It didn’t only affect my career choices; it affected my whole life.’
This extended to relationships. ‘I would put up with bad behaviour from men, I think because in my head I was incomplete and so I didn’t deserve any better.’ Then, in 2010, she read about womb transplants and contacted the charity. While Kelly – her only sibling – had previously offered to act as a surrogate, ‘surrogacy isn’t the same as feeling your own baby grow inside you, and I craved that experience’, says Lauren.
‘For me the be all and end all is to have a child, I wanted to be a mum so badly.’
In fact, when she was accepted on to the waiting list for a transplant, she was single and decided if she got to the stage of having a transplant she was going to go ahead with an egg fertilised by a sperm donor rather than miss the opportunity.
The pandemic halted plans to go ahead with the surgery, ‘but that was my saving grace as I met David’, says Lauren.
They met on a dating app and Lauren told him about her MRKH during their first virtual date – which lasted an astonishing ten hours. ‘His reaction was, “Well, I’m not looking to have kids at the moment, so let’s see how we go”.’
The couple eventually moved in together and got on with life, but Lauren’s desire for a family gnawed at her almost daily – and David became increasingly keen. Kelly, meanwhile, assured Lauren she was happy to have the operation whenever she wanted.
‘My sister and I are really close,’ says Lauren. ‘I knew she was pregnant with her last child before she did, I just sensed it.
‘She was certain her third child would be her last and said, “Have my womb. I’m done with it, and I know how much this means to you, Lauren”. I will never, ever be able to say thank you enough.’
By 2024, the charity was able to reschedule the delayed transplant. The only one to voice opposition was Lauren’s dad, Paul.
‘His attitude was, “What on earth are you putting yourself through this for?”. In his view, getting to carry a baby didn’t make a difference,’ says Lauren. ‘In the end he came round.’
The transplant was scheduled for May 11. Lauren’s sister ‘was really nervous, but I kept reassuring her it was going to be OK’.
It took 11 hours in total to remove Kelly’s womb and stitch it in place in Lauren.
‘My sister was in some pain straight after, but I was fine until day two, then I was in absolute agony, hell on earth. At times I thought, “What have I done?”. My sister came to see me and said, “Do you regret it?” At that point I honestly did.’
Lauren was in hospital a week, then back at home but still feeling so tender it hurt to sit to watch TV.
In June, Lauren had her first period. This, too, tested her.
‘It was really heavy, and made me feel drained. The next one was so heavy I collapsed and went out cold,’ she says.
When that happened she was actually already in hospital as, at the beginning of July, ‘all of a sudden I was vomiting and in excruciating pain’, recalls Lauren.
She was rushed into her local hospital before the doctors, realising she had a bowel obstruction, blue-lighted her back to the Churchill in Oxford where she had received the transplant.
It took two operations to unglue the bowel and her recovery was slow and difficult, taking more than two months. She needed blood infusions, had pumps on her wounds to help them heal and then had a severe reaction when she was taken off a strong painkiller, oxycodone.
‘I remember lying in my hospital bed thinking, “I don’t know if I am going to get through this”,’ Lauren says. ‘It felt like the darkest hole I had ever been in.’
Fortunately, the womb itself was unscathed, but Lauren was discharged at the end of August last year physically and mentally bruised. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that she felt fit enough to start having her embryos implanted (she and David had had to create these with IVF before the transplant operation could take place).
The first attempt ended in miscarriage at five weeks. Revealing the steel that has helped her throughout, Lauren says: ‘I was really upset, but the next day I was like: “Let’s do it again”.
‘I hadn’t come this far to give up there and then.’
Lauren with her fiance David, 39, after the womb transplant. ‘You have to really, really want it to get through a womb transplant. But to be pregnant with my child means the world to me,’ she says
![At six months pregnant, Lauren is now starting to let herself believe she really will be a mum. Since the end of June, she has started to feel ‘taps and kicking into [her] back’ as her son moves](https://i.dailymail.com/1s/2026/08/03/17/110413893-16025353-image-a-5_1785773623540.jpg)
At six months pregnant, Lauren is now starting to let herself believe she really will be a mum. Since the end of June, she has started to feel ‘taps and kicking into [her] back’ as her son moves
She feared a repeat attempt in March was also going to end in miscarriage when, on Mother’s Day, she started bleeding. ‘I knew it was too early really to do a pregnancy test, but I was panicking. When it showed positive it wasn’t the relaxed and joyful moment I hoped for as I was so scared I was about to lose another baby.’
She quietly shared the news with David, and during an emotional video call with her mum showed her the positive test.
She didn’t relax until her first scan at seven weeks pregnant.
She now has these every two weeks as hers is designated a high-risk pregnancy.
At six months pregnant she is now starting to let herself believe she really will be a mum. Since the end of June, she has started to feel ‘taps and kicking into my back’ as her son moves.
He’ll be delivered, by caesarean, at around 32 weeks – far earlier than a normal pregnancy in order to reduce the strain on the womb.
‘I have bought a disgusting amount of baby clothes, but he is going to have so many people to meet when he is born he is going to need them,’ she says.
Women who’ve had a womb transplant can have up to two babies, but the womb will be removed after five years because as long as the organ is in place they need to take immunosuppressants – even during pregnancy – to stop the body rejecting it and this can raise the risk of cancer in the long term.
Lauren and David are due to get married next year and Lauren is unsure whether their plans will include another baby.
‘I’m so enjoying being pregnant that part of me thinks I don’t want to do this just once,’ she says. ‘And I also know how much I love my sister and don’t want to deprive our son of a sibling.
‘But financially we want to be in a place where we can provide what we need for our son. It is a dilemma. We will decide when we finally have this baby in our arms – I think that’s when your instincts as a parent will kick in.
‘This process has been physically, emotionally and financially draining – paying for all the IVF and the travel back and forth, plus accommodation has cost around £50,000.
‘You have to really, really want it to get through a womb transplant. But to be pregnant with my child means the world to me – and I just hope other women in my position get the same chance.’
Lauren’s Instagram: @no_womb_at_the_inn
