Transplant granted me my dream of motherhood
MALIN Stenberg never thought she would be able to carry children when she discovered she had been born without a womb.
After being diagnosed with MRKH syndrome she resigned herself to a life without children and threw herself into her career as a broker in the aviation industry. But in September 201 , she became the first woman to successfully have a baby with a womb transplant.
Now three, her son Vincent is thriving in his native Sweden. Miss Stenberg, 0, and her partner Claes Nilsson, a former professional golfer, refused to accept they would never have children.
The couple joined a pioneering project taking place at Gothenburg University.
Nine young women were given wombs removed from mothers, sisters and friends who had completed their own families and no longer needed them.
Miss Stenberg’s donor was 61-year-old family friend Ewa Rosen, who is now godmother to Vincent.
‘When I held him for the first time, it was just amazing,’ she has said.
‘I felt immediately that he was my baby. It just felt so natural. We truly are a family now. 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 family and it doesn’t matter if it is through a womb transplant, or adoption, or something else. It is magical.’
Around one in 5,000 women are born without a womb, or have had it removed because of cancer or other illnesses. Miss Stenberg had the donor womb removed after birth because doctors feared a second pregnancy would be riskier.
Recalling the moment she was told she had no womb, she said: ‘I wasn’t ready to hear it, I couldn’t take it in. 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. ‘I wanted to know what I had done to deserve this. I felt so alone.’