“It’s definitely brought us closer together.”
A same-sex couple in the UK have become the first in the world to carry their baby in both of their wombs.
Jasmine Francis-Smith and her wife Donna recently welcomed their baby boy, Otis, following a revolutionary IVF procedure.
Referred to as “shared motherhood,” the procedure allows one parent to incubate the egg for a period of time before it is implanted in the other parent.
Donna told The Telegraph that she and her wife were “overwhelmed” by the procedure.
“You get a lot of same-sex couples where one person is doing the whole thing, and the one person is getting pregnant and giving birth, whereas with this we’re both involved in a massive way,” she said.
“It’s definitely brought us closer together emotionally. We’re a close couple anyway but we both have a special bond with Otis as well which was helped by the way we’ve done it.”
Donna explained that the egg was collected from her body and put back in to incubate for 18 hours. It was then removed and implanted in Jasmine’s womb, leading to pregnancy.
The couple’s procedure was carried out by London Women’s Clinic. Both women said that the experience made them feel “equal in the whole process.”
“If we had to go through the process again there is nothing we would change,” said Jasmine.
The clinic’s medical director Nick Macklon said that this is the first time the procedure, otherwise known as Anecova, had ever been carried out successfully.
“This is the first time this has been done,” he said.
“It’s very exciting because it means that for lesbian couples wanting to have babies together both of them can be involved in actively creating the embryo and then creating the baby.”
