Georgia Barrington always knew she wanted to be a mother. But at just 15, her dreams were shattered by a diagnosis that changed everything: Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare condition affecting about one in 5,000 women, which meant she was born without a womb and would never be able to carry a child. According to BBC, the news left her devastated. "It was devastating, my whole world had fallen apart," Georgia 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."
In that moment of heartbreak, Georgia’s best friend Daisy Hope made a promise—one that would take more than a decade to fulfill. The two had been inseparable since childhood, their fathers best friends, and their own bond only deepened by Georgia’s diagnosis. Daisy, not particularly maternal at the time, simply wanted to offer hope. As she told Emma Barnett on the podcast Ready to Talk, "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." Daisy admits, "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."
Years passed. Georgia, determined not to let her diagnosis define her, trained as a midwife—surrounding herself with new mothers and babies, even as she tried to make peace with the idea that motherhood, for her, might look different. "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." Daisy, meanwhile, went on to have her own daughter, with Georgia as her midwife. The experience of becoming a mother herself only strengthened Daisy’s resolve to fulfill the promise she’d made as a teenager. "The love I felt for my child was amazing and I thought everyone should be able to have that feeling," Daisy says.
Before Daisy started her own family, she made sure her partner understood the commitment she’d made to Georgia. As reported by BBC, on her very first date with the man who would become her partner and the father of her child, Daisy brought up the promise, "in case it would be a deal-breaker." He accepted it, and the promise remained quietly in the background until Daisy, now a mother, felt ready to help Georgia experience parenthood.
In 2023, after years of waiting and hoping, the two friends began the IVF process. Their first attempt brought hope, but it was not to last. At a seven-week scan, the nurse couldn’t find anything on the screen. Georgia remembers, "I had this sinking feeling, and all hope just dropped away." The embryo had not developed, and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Daisy was wracked with guilt, feeling she had let her friend down, while Georgia struggled with the loss. Still, they tried again.
On their second attempt, things felt different. "When I found out I was pregnant again, I thought the world cannot be this cruel twice," Daisy told BBC. At six weeks, a scan revealed a tiny heartbeat, 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, convinced she had lost the baby, but when doctors checked, the heartbeat was still there. Against the odds, the pregnancy continued.
Months later, Daisy went into labour slightly earlier than expected. The birth was a moment of overwhelming emotion for both women. Georgia, present at the birth, was so overcome that she forgot to check the baby’s sex. "As soon as I saw the baby's head, I just lost it and we were all crying," she recalls. The baby girl, named Ottilie, was born a few weeks before November 29, 2025. Georgia now finds herself navigating the early days of motherhood, sometimes still struggling to believe it’s real. "I wish I could take this moment and hand it to my 15-year-old self, sitting in that GP surgery," she says. "I feel so lucky and grateful."
The story, shared in detail on the podcast Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett, is more than just a tale of medical science and perseverance. As Emma Barnett notes in her BBC feature, it’s a testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary acts of kindness people are capable of. "Having interviewed more than 1,000 people—I can safely say their experience is definitely my story of the year," Barnett writes. She describes the friendship between Georgia and Daisy as "arresting due to its sheer human goodness and positivity." The two women, surrounded by the support of their partners, navigated the complex, emotional journey of IVF, miscarriage, and finally, the joy of a new life.
Daisy, reflecting on her decision, says, "We have this bond that no one will ever have with their friends because we've been through something so personal." She adds, "I would rather her and Georgia had a baby each, than she had two and Georgia had none." For Daisy, carrying her best friend’s child became the greatest act of her life, giving her a sense of purpose she hadn’t known before. "The biggest reminder is how altruism, however great or small, and thinking of others’ needs, really is the greatest act we can all perform," Barnett observes.
Georgia’s journey is also a story of resilience in the face of crushing disappointment. Her diagnosis at 15 was delivered, as Barnett puts it, "clumsily and poorly," and it took therapy and years of self-reflection for Georgia to find peace with her new reality. Becoming a midwife, she says, was both a way to heal and a way to stay close to the world she feared she’d lost. Even as she helped bring other women’s babies into the world, she never fully gave up hope that one day, she might have a child of her own—even if that path looked different from what she’d once imagined.
For many, stories of surrogacy and infertility are fraught with pain, uncertainty, and social stigma. But Georgia and Daisy’s story, as told on BBC and in Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett, is a rare example of how friendship, love, and determination can lead to something beautiful. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the most important promises are the ones made quietly, out of love, and kept against all odds.
As Georgia and Daisy settle into this new chapter, their story stands as a testament to the enduring power of friendship and the hope that, even in the face of heartbreak, dreams can come true—just sometimes, in ways we never expected.
