Photo via Science and Technology Daily

A healthy baby boy was born on January 20 in Xi’an, northwest China’s Shaanxi province, leaving the nation in awe, as the first-ever baby born from a transplanted womb in China.

The baby is believed to be the 14th in the world, reported Science and Technology Daily.

The baby boy, weighing 2 kilograms and measuring 48 centimeters in height, was delivered via C-section surgery after living inside the womb for 39 weeks. Doctors feared that his continued growth inside the transplanted womb might give the mother too much pressure.

The boy’s mother, Yang Hua (pseudonym), received China’s first womb transplant surgery in November 2015 when she was 22 years old. Yang’s mother donated her womb to her daughter who was diagnosed with congenital absence of the uterus, according to the newspaper.

Prior to her surgery, Yang, a newly-wedded woman at the time, received an egg retrieval operation to create 14 embryos through assisted reproductive technology for her subsequence childbirth in August that year.

Last June, Yang began to prepare for her pregnancy, receiving her frozen embryos into her transplanted uterus. After five attempts, Yang was successfully pregnant and had a healthy baby boy.

According to Professor Chen Biliang, who was also the chief surgeon of the C-section surgery, womb transplantation is still a medical challenge in China and around the world. In China, some 1 million females are unable to get pregnant and some 30,000–50,000 newborns have a congenital disorder that affects the female reproductive system.

Professor Chen’s team at Xijing Hospital in Xi’an has successfully done two human uterus transplantations, making China among the top five countries capable of such surgery, together with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Sweden, and the United States.