A WOMAN who gave birth after receiving the world's first whole ovary transplant yesterday described her newborn baby daughter as "a little miracle".
Susanne Butscher, 39, was given the ovary by her twin sister a year ago after she suffered an early menopause.
She has named her daughter Maja after the Roman goddess of fertility and hopes her experience will offer hope to other women who may ben
efit from the pioneering procedure.
Yesterday the new mum said: "Being a mother at last is an indescribable feeling.
"It's been hard to take my eyes off her since she was born.
"Being the first woman in the world to give birth after a whole ovary transplant hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm just so grateful to the doctors who enabled this to happen and to my sister, of course.
"I'm so lucky to have had this wonderful opportunity, which has given me a sense of completeness I would never have had otherwise.
"When I saw her for the first time I just cried. She really is a little miracle."
Butscher, an acupuncturist and complementary therapist, was diagnosed as being infertile 12 years ago.
The ovary transplant was recommended to halt the progress of osteoporosis which she was suffering as a result of an early menopause. After she began ovulating normally she became pregnant.
Butscher gave birth by elective caesarean at the Portland Hospital in London on Tuesday after she reached full term but showed no signs of labour.
Maja, who weighed 7lb 15oz, is genetically the child of Butscher's twin sister Dorothee, who has two children.
Doctors believe the treatment will not only help women who suffer an early menopause, but could also help women who need to undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer and who could freeze one of their own ovaries before beginning treatment.
Butscher and her husband Stephan, 40, moved from their home in Germany to London six years ago.
Dr Sherman Silber, the expert who carried out the ovary transplant operation, is based at the Infertility Centre of St Louis, Missouri, in the United States.
He has previously given ovarian tissue transplants to nine twins but Butscher's case is the first successful whole ovary transplant.
The full article contains 373 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
