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A young woman has revealed her pain at discovering she was born without a womb.
When educational assistant Sarah Giesbrecht (21) from Ontario, Canada, was 16 years old, she noticed that she hadn’t started menstruating like her friends.
She started to worry when her family members kept asking her if her period had started, expecting it to have begun when she was 14 or 15.
Feeling scared, Sarah went to her doctor to ask questions but he insisted she had nothing to worry about.
“The doctor made me feel like this wasn’t an issue and that there was still lots of time for it to happen,” Sarah said.
“I was really confused, and my friends and family felt it wasn’t normal because girls normally have their menstrual cycle at the age of 14 or 15.”
Two years later Sarah’s period still hadn’t arrived, so she went back to the doctor and demanded they run tests on her.
She went for an ultrasound where the sonographer wouldn’t tell her what was going on with her scan and told her to speak to her doctor.
A fortnight later, the doctor told her they thought she had an absent uterus but had to go for an MRI and blood tests for this to be confirmed.
After waiting four months for her results, a doctor gave her the devastating news that she had Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), a condition that meant that she was born without a uterus.
“While she was explaining to me I was crying and blanked out everything she was saying. I was thinking to myself that I’ll never be a mother and I’ll never have children.
“At the time I was in a committed relationship of three years and I knew my boyfriend wanted children as well.”
Sarah battled with depression due to the prospect of not being able to have children but her now husband Jacob (23) stood by her through it all.
“It was hard to accept and I still haven’t fully come to terms with it. Having children was always my main goal and having that taken from me was hard.”
The pair were married in July 2017 and after exploring adoption and surrogacy, have set up a Go Fund Me page so that they can fulfil their dream of having a biological baby through a gestational surrogate.
MRKH is a congenital disorder of the female reproductive system that affects approximately one out of every 5 000 women.
It causes the vagina and uterus to be underdeveloped or absent, although external genitalia are normal.
Women with the condition usually have normally functioning ovaries but don’t menstruate due to the absence of a uterus.
Sarah met Jacob in 2012 and he’s supported her throughout her journey to diagnosis.
“I told him in the beginning of the relationship that there was a possibility I wouldn’t be able to have children and he took it pretty hard. He wanted children as well but he responded and said, ‘I want to spend my life with you’ and that we’d figure out a way when the time comes.
“His support was amazing, and he came to the majority of my appointments and has always been there for me.
“After we got married in 2017 we discussed surrogacy and adoption but every time we discussed it we always turned back to surrogacy because we wanted to have the opportunity to have our own biological child.
“For us to reach our Go Fund Me target would mean that the possibility to have a child might become a reality.”
