Publications
Partners
Late last year April Lane (39), from Massachusetts, decided to become a donor so the recipient could conceive and carry a child, Pop Sugar reports.
“Infertility really affects you, emotionally and socially, in a huge way,” April said.
“If I could help one other person to be relieved of some of that, I would.”
April and her husband, Brian, were diagnosed with "unexplained infertility" and tried for years to get pregnant through in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
The couple adopted a boy but surprisingly fell pregnant just 13 months later and had another son, Good Morning America reports.
After 10 rounds of IVF they also welcomed twin daughters and a year later their third daughter arrived.
After joining infertility support groups and paying for women’s fertility treatments, April heard that Baylor University Medical Centre in Dallas was performing clinical trials for uterus transplants and decided to sign up.
“My husband and I both felt like our family building had been resolved but we weren’t necessarily resolved with building a family for someone else,” April told Scary Mommy.
“We knew pretty quickly after I got the call that I was going to do it.”
April, who works for a biotech company, underwent a 15-hour operation to remove her uterus, which turned out to be a match for an anonymous recipient.
"Her story is incredible in itself because she was one of these women [who], when she couldn't have children, she chose options women had before uterus transplants," said April's doctor, Liza Johannesson.
"She knows the struggle very close up, what these women go through. A lot [of the women] are meeting afterwards and they form incredible bonds."
April spent five days in a Dallas hospital before flying back home.
"If I could help just one family, that’s healing for me," she said.
"[The surgery] is short-lived but my recipient has her whole life thinking she can’t carry children. So for eight weeks of feeling [bad], it’s worth it."
Sources: Pop Sugar, Good Morning America, Scary Mommy
