With the intention of giving hope to others
with similar conditions, first woman Malin Stenberg who had womb transplant and
delivered a baby boy tells of her 'total happiness' after her son's birth and
how she wants her story to give hope to others.
At the age of 15, Malin Stenberg was told she
had been born without a womb so would never carry a child of her own.
About three years ago, Miss Stenberg was
given a womb by a family friend, as part of a pioneering transplant programme
at Gothenburg University, in Sweden, and 20 months ago, she made history by
giving birth to a son named Vincent.
She revealed has now spoken about the magic
of being a mother to her son Vincent
But now she has spoken of the magic of
motherhood after becoming the world’s first woman to have a baby with a womb
transplant.
Miss Stenberg, 38, said ‘If you wish for a
family and you are unable to have one naturally, for whatever reason, it is so
sad,’
‘Total
happiness comes from having a family and it doesn’t matter if it is through a
womb transplant, or adoption or something else. It is magical.’
According
to dailymail, womb transplants have been attempted before but all had failed,
until Vincent was born. As she watched the youngster play with a toy golf set
in their home near Gothenburg, Miss Stenberg described her devastation at being
told as a teenager that she suffered from MRKH Syndrome, a rare genetic
condition which meant she was born without a womb.
‘I
wasn’t ready to hear it, I couldn’t take it in,’ she said. ‘I thought that this
means that I’ll never be able to carry a child of my own – but that is what
women are made for. It felt so unfair. I loved kids and babies and I wanted to
know what I had done to deserve this. I felt so alone.’
Eventually,
she resigned herself to a life without children and threw herself into her
career as a broker in the aviation industry.
Claes
promised to find a way for the couple, who live near Gothenburg, Sweden, to
have a family and the pair looked into adoption and surrogacy.
The
couple looked into adoption and surrogacy before joining the womb transplant
project at Gothenburg University.
Most
of the nine women who took part in the scheme were given wombs donated by their
own mothers. But Miss Stenberg’s donor was 61-year-old family friend Ewa Rosen.
After
the womb was successfully transplanted, Miss Stenberg had IVF treatment – and
became pregnant on her first attempt. She and Claes, 40, then ‘walked on
eggshells’, until their son was born two months premature.
Miss
Stenberg said: ‘When I held him for the first time, it was just amazing. I felt
immediately that he was my baby. It just felt so natural. We truly are a family
now.’
Despite
the success of her first pregnancy, Malin has already had her womb removed as a
second pregnancy is expected to be more dangerous.
