The dream of becoming a mother seemed impossible for Lauren Fowler for most of her life. Born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, she had ovaries but was born without a womb, meaning she could not carry a pregnancy naturally.
Keep reading to learn more.
Lauren, from Kent, was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome at 15 after doctors investigated why she had never started her periods. The news completely changed how she imagined her future.
“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,” she said.
She even changed her career plans, abandoning her dream of becoming a midwife because she feared it would be too painful to deliver other women’s babies knowing she might never have one herself.
For years, Lauren searched for another possibility. She learned about womb transplants around 2010 and eventually joined a transplant programme. Her sister Kelly, already a mother of three, had previously offered to help as a surrogate, but Lauren wanted the chance to actually experience pregnancy herself.
Then Kelly offered something even more extraordinary.
She told Lauren, “Have my womb. I’m done with it, and I know how much this means to you.”
Lauren and her sister underwent an 11-hour operation
In May 2025, the sisters underwent surgery in Oxford. Kelly donated her womb, which surgeons then transplanted into Lauren in an operation that lasted around 11 hours.
The transplant itself was successful, but what followed was anything but easy.
Lauren experienced extremely heavy periods after receiving the womb — something she had never experienced before — and later developed a serious bowel obstruction caused by scar tissue. She required two further operations, spent more than two months in hospital and lost around 10kg during the ordeal. At one point, she wasn’t sure she would survive.
However, the transplanted womb remained healthy and was not rejected by her body.
Once she recovered, Lauren and her partner David began trying to achieve the pregnancy they had spent years dreaming about.
Their first embryo transfer ended in miscarriage at five weeks.
But Lauren refused to give up.
“I hadn’t come this far to give up there and then,” she said.
And now, Lauren is pregnant with her first child
A second attempt was successful, and Lauren is now 26 weeks pregnant with a baby boy, with her due date in October.
Because womb-transplant pregnancies are considered high risk, Lauren is having regular scans and is expected to deliver by caesarean section at around 32 weeks, reducing the strain on the transplanted womb.
After everything she has endured, she is finally beginning to believe that the impossible might actually be happening.
“I’m still struggling with imposter syndrome,” she said. “I keep thinking, ‘Can this really be happening to me?’”
Her sister Kelly has also described the experience as something that has brought them even closer, with her three children now eagerly waiting to meet their cousin.
And there is another remarkable part to Lauren’s story, she is helping push womb transplantation forward for thousands of other women.
MRKH affects roughly 1 in 5,000 women, and womb transplantation could potentially give some women who were born without a uterus the opportunity to experience pregnancy themselves. The UK trial is investigating whether the procedure can eventually become more widely available.
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