- Malin Stenberg was
only 15 when told she had been born without a womb
- Her friend donated one
as part of programme at Gothenburg University
- She has now spoken about the magic of being a mother to her son Vincent
Malin Stenberg
was only 15 when she was told she had been born without a womb and so would
never carry a child of her own.
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 she wanted to tell her story to give hope to others in the same
situation.
‘If you wish
for a family and you are unable to have one naturally, for whatever reason, it
is so sad,’ she said
‘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.’
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, Vincent.
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.
Everything
changed after she met her fiancé Claes Nilsson when she was 30. She told him
about her condition early in their relationship and he vowed to find a way for
them to have a family.
The couple
looked into adoption and surrogacy before joining the womb transplant project
at Gothenburg University.
Malin Stenberg
has spoken of the magic of motherhood
after becoming the world’s first woman to have a baby with a womb transplant
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.
The couple
chose the name Vincent, which is derived from the Latin for ‘to conquer’, to
mark the extraordinary lengths they undertook to have him.
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.’
Mrs Rosen,
whose womb made everything possible, is his godmother and sees him regularly.
Since Vincent
was born, four more babies – three boys and a girl – have followed and several
other countries have launched their own programmes.
Surgeon Richard
Smith, head of charity Womb Transplant UK, is gearing up to start a series of
similar operations here.
An estimated
15,000 British women were born without a womb or have had it removed because of
cancer or other illness.
Vincent will
not be joined by a little brother or sister because his mother has had her new
womb removed over fears a second pregnancy would be more dangerous.
By Fiona Macrae Science Editor For The Daily Mail
