Vadodara womb recipient completes first trimester

PUNE: For the first time in the country, a uterus recipient has completed the crucial first trimester (12 weeks) of pregnancy. The woman and her roughly 13-week-old fetus are both doing well. Doctors are hopeful of a normal pregnancy.

The 27-year-old woman from Vadodara in Gujarat is expected to deliver in December, which will make her the first woman in India to deliver a baby after undergoing a uterus transplant.
“The Vadodara woman crossed the first trimester and entered the second trimester on June 18. The first 12 weeks are crucial for any pregnancy as abortions are common during this period. Completing the first trimester is an important milestone, especially for a uterus recipient,” said Shailesh Puntambekar, transplant surgeon of Galaxy Care Hospital. “As the pregnancy advances, the chances of miscarriage keep going down,” he added.
Doctors, however, have planned full medical supervision till the woman completes 18 to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Major anomalies in fetal growth can be detected at 18 weeks. “An anomaly scan is usually done between 18th and 19th week. It can reveal major birth defects,” Puntambekar said.
“The current plan is to take utmost care of the mother and the baby, as in any normal pregnancy, besides checking the proper growth milestones as this is a post-transplant pregnancy,” said the hospital’s gynaecologist Milind Telang. Elaborating, Telang said, “The woman is on immune-suppressants. Also, as the transplanted uterus does not have a nerve supply, she will not experience any pain if she slips into spontaneous miscarriage or any other complication. Therefore, bed-rest, proper nutrition and close monitoring of the pregnancy is a must.”
The Vadodara woman, who had undergone a uterine transplant on May 19, 2017, had received her mother’s uterus. That too is a factor. “We need to understand that the uterus is delivering after 20 years. Additionally, as the nerves are not transplanted, the woman will not feel the pain of an abortion. So clinical and sonography monitoring will have to be carried out vigilantly,” hospital’s gynaecologist and IVF expert Pankaj Kulkarni added.
Incidentally, just a day before the Vadodara woman had her uterus transplant surgery, a 22-year-old from Solapur became the first uterus transplant recipient in the country on May 18, 2017. Though she too had conceived following the first single-embryo transfer, the Solapur woman suffered a miscarriage in the fifth week of her pregnancy.
“The Solapur woman underwent another embryo transfer last week. We expect the positive result by July 4 when the pregnancy test will be done. If she gets pregnant, we will become the most successful country in this arena with back-to-back pregnancies in both woman with uterus transplants,” Kulkarni said.