My best friend promised she’d have my baby and now I’m a mum

Georgia Barrington is a new mother, but she’s not 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 they made as teenagers.

Women were inseparable throughout their lives. They call themselves “soul brothers” and grew up together because their fathers were such good friends.

The closeness of their childhood would later become the basis for an act of generosity that would change their lives.

At age 15, Georgia was told something no teenage girl ever expected to hear: She was born without a womb and would never be able to carry a child.

The diagnosis of Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome affects approximately 1 in 5,000 women, and for Georgia, it felt like her future was rewritten in a single moment.

“It was devastating, my whole world came crashing down,” he recalls. “I grew up always thinking I would be a mother, and that feeling was ripped out from under me and everything I dreamed of was gone.”

Daisy wasn’t very motherly at the time, and she vividly remembers her diagnosis and how “unfair” it was that her friend, who had always wanted to have children, couldn’t.

“I wanted to make him feel good and give him some hope that it wasn’t the end of the world, so I said I would carry a baby for him one day,” she says. Ready to Talk to Emma Barnett.

“I don’t think I knew what I was saying at the time, but I always knew this was something I was going to do for Georgia.”

More than a decade later, Daisy kept that promise, and in 2023, the two women began the in vitro fertilization process.

Georgia trained as a midwife and was immersed in the world she feared she would never be a part of.

“I was once asked if this was the right career for me,” he says. “But it actually helped me heal, and I knew I was going to have a child one way or another.”

Years later, Daisy gave birth to her first child, with Georgia as a midwife, and becoming a mother herself strengthened her belief in fulfilling her promise.

“The love I felt for my child was amazing, and I thought everyone should be able to experience that feeling,” she says.

She admits that she was initially “a little naive” because she had an uneventful pregnancy with her daughter, so she “assumed everything would go smoothly again.”

She became pregnant with the first embryo and everything seemed to be progressing normally, allowing both women to believe that the future they had dreamed of was finally coming true. But a scan at seven weeks revealed an empty uterus.

Georgia remembers the moment the nurse told her she couldn’t see anything on the scan.

“I had a sinking feeling and all my hopes vanished,” he says.

A week later it was confirmed that the embryo had not developed into a baby.

“I thought it was all my fault,” Daisy confessed, admitting that she found the pain so overwhelming that she felt like she had let her friend down, while Georgia grappled with the realization that even her most promising attempts had not been successful.

They tried again, though, and the second time something felt different, as Daisy says: “When I found out I was pregnant again, I thought the world couldn’t be this cruel twice.”

Six weeks later, the pair sat in a hospital room holding their breath as a tiny heartbeat appeared on the screen, but later that day Daisy began bleeding heavily.

“I thought it would happen all over again and I was terrified,” he says.

She bled for six hours and was sure she was miscarrying, but when doctors checked, she still had a heartbeat and her pregnancy was full term.

Daisy went into labor a little earlier than expected and gave birth to a baby girl a few months ago.

Georgia was so overwhelmed at the time that she “forgot to check the gender of the baby.”

“As soon as I saw the baby’s head, I lost it and we were all crying.”

She says she still finds it hard to believe she actually has a child and wishes she could “give this moment to my 15-year-old self sitting in that GP surgery.”

Georgia describes how “lucky and grateful” she feels, while Daisy says she always knew she would help her best friend in any way she could.

“We have a bond that no one can have with their friends because we went through something so personal.”

All episodes of Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett are available on BBC Sounds, with new episodes released every Friday.