Georgia Barrington has just become a new mother but she isn't the one who gave birth to her daughter. Instead, that moment belonged to her best friend, Daisy Hope, who carried the baby for her after a promise made when they were teenagers.
The women have been inseparable their whole lives. They call themselves “soul sisters” and have grown up together as their fathers are best friends.
Their childhood closeness would later become the foundation for a life-changing act of generosity.
At 15, Georgia was told something no young girl expects to hear – she had been born without a womb and would never carry a child.
The diagnosis, Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, affects around one in 5,000 women and for Georgia, it felt like her future had been rewritten in a single moment.
“It was devastating, my whole world had fallen apart,” she recalls. “I'd always grown up thinking I would be a mum and that was ripped out from under me and everything I ever dreamed of had gone.”
Back then, Daisy wasn't particularly maternal and she remembers the diagnosis vividly and how “unfair” it felt that her friend who had always wanted to have a child couldn't.
“I wanted her to feel * ok and to give her some hope that it wasn't the end of the world so I said that I would carry a baby for her one day,” she tells Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett.
“I don't think I understood what I was saying then but I always knew this was something I was going to do for Georgia.”
More than a decade later, Daisy followed through on that promise and in 2023 the two women began the IVF process.
Georgia had trained as a midwife, immersing herself in the world she feared she could never be part of.
“I was asked once whether this was the right career for me,” she says. “But actually, it helped me heal and deep down I knew I'd have a child one way or another.”
Years later, Daisy had her first child – with Georgia as her midwife – and becoming a mum herself strengthened her conviction to fulfil her promise.
“The love I felt for my child was amazing and I thought everyone should be able to have that feeling,” she says.
She admits she was a “bit naïve” at the beginning as she had a straightforward pregnancy with her daughter and so “assumed everything would go smoothly again”.
‘Hope dropped away'
She became pregnant with the first embryo and everything seemed to be progressing normally and both women allowed themselves to believe the future they'd imagined was finally happening. But a scan at seven weeks revealed an empty womb.
Georgia remembers the moment the nurse said she couldn't see anything on the scan.
“I had this sinking feeling, and all hope just dropped away,” she says.
A week later it was confirmed that the embryo hadn't become a baby.
“I thought it was all my fault,” admits Daisy who found the grief overwhelming, feeling she had let her friend down, while Georgia struggled with the realisation that even their most promising attempt hadn't succeeded.
Still, they tried again and on the second time, something felt different as Daisy says: “When I found out I was pregnant again, I thought the world cannot be this cruel twice.”
Six weeks in, the pair sat in a hospital room holding their breath as a tiny heartbeat appeared on the screen, but later that day, Daisy began to bleed heavily.
“I thought it was happening all over again and I was terrified,” she says.
She bled for six hours and was convinced she had miscarried but when doctors checked, the heartbeat was still there and the pregnancy continued to full term.
Daisy went into labour slightly earlier than expected and a few months ago gave birth to a baby girl.
Georgia was so overwhelmed in the moment she “forgot to check the sex of the baby”.
“As soon as I saw the baby's head, I just lost it and we were all crying.”
She says she still struggles to believe she really has a child and wishes she could “take this moment and hand it to my 15-year-old self, sitting in that GP surgery”.
As Georgia talks of how “lucky and grateful” she feels, Daisy says she always knew she would help her best friend out however she could.
“We have this bond that no one will ever have with their friends because we've been through something so personal.”
All episodes of Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett are available on BBC Sounds, new episodes drop every Friday.
