Sister Selflessly Donates Uterus to Her Sister So She Can Have a Child

Dream - Having two or more children can sometimes overwhelm parents. Especially if the children are close in age and often argue. Disputes are inevitable.

But it's different for these two siblings. The older sister selflessly donated her uterus to her younger sister so she could have a child.

The 40-year-old woman, whose name is not mentioned, felt that her family was complete after giving birth to two children. She was willing to donate her uterus to her 34-year-old sister.

The nine-hour operation was performed at Churchill Hospital in Oxford, England.

Professor Richard Smith, clinical lead at the charity Womb Transplant UK and consultant gynecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said that the experience was extraordinary and could be considered a great success.

"I am very pleased that we have a donor who can truly return to normal after such a major operation and that the recipient can undergo her immunosuppressive therapy very well and hopes to have a baby," said Dr. Richard, as quoted from Independent.

She hopes that the woman who received the uterus transplant will have many children in the future. The uterus transplant is also the first in England.

"Now, I feel very proud of what we have achieved and very happy for her," she said.

The woman who received the uterus was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare condition that affects about one in every 5,000 women.

In MRKH patients, women have underdeveloped or absent vaginas and underdeveloped or missing uteruses.

The first sign of this condition is when a teenage girl does not experience menstruation.

However, their ovaries are still intact and still function to produce eggs and female hormones, making it possible to conceive through fertility treatment.

Before receiving her new uterus, the woman had undergone two rounds of fertility stimulation to produce eggs, followed by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to create embryos.

Eight embryos reached the blastocyst stage, which means they have a successful chance in IVF and were frozen when the patient underwent treatment at the Lister Fertility Clinic in central London later this year.

Smith said that currently the transplanted uterus is functioning properly and the IVF plan is going according to plan. This transplantation is estimated to last a maximum of five years before the uterus is removed.

Report: Halwa Nadiyah Rosadi