Transgender girl, 12, starts puberty blockers, as mother says she 'knew she wanted to be female from aged three'

A 12-year-old transgender girl has started puberty blocking treatment, as her mother says she "knew from the age of three" that she wanted to be female.

Ash Lammin, who was born a boy, is embarking on a lengthy journey to transition to female at an NHS-run clinic and is one of the youngest in the country to do so.

She has researched the process in depth and says that she eventually wants a womb transplant so that she can be a mother when she's older.

Her mother, Terri Lammin, 43, said that Ash “insisted she was a girl from the moment she could speak”.

"When she was three she said to me, 'I'm a boy because you gave me a boy's name - it's your fault,” Ms Lammin, from Ramsgate, Kent, said. “I remember feeling horrible, because she blamed me.

"I'd never come across it before and I just went along with it. I just thought 'if he's happy, well that's the main thing.'"

Ash, who changed her name by deed poll to Ashley when she was eight, will start taking hormone blockers to halt the onset of puberty until she is 18. She will then decide whether to go ahead with gender reassignment surgery.

Puberty blockers can be prescribed to any child suffering from gender dysphoria from age 10 by the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

GIDS has so far treated over a thousand children with puberty blockers, with about 230 of these children under the age of 14.

Before 2011, GIDS would only give puberty blockers to children once they had turned 16. But the rules were relaxed after reports emerged of British children going overseas to buy the drugs.

Commenting on her experience, Ash said: "The journey is long and it's still going, but I feel like the sense of victory is there through it all.”