A woman born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH) has explained how she is able to have sex.
The rare congenital health disorder affects approximately one in every 4,500 to 5,000 female newborns worldwide.
Those affected are born without, or with an underdeveloped or absent uterus and upper vagina, while external function remains normal.
People with MRKH can have typical puberty and hormonal development, but are unable to menstruate or carry a pregnancy without medical assistance.
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Women who have the syndrome can still have sex, while for some it is recommended to have treatment like vaginal lengthening to create a functional vagina for intercourse.
Commenting on a Reddit thread, a user claiming to be a 44-year-old female who was diagnosed with MRKH at the age of 16 said she was able to dilate without any surgery.
"I dilated without any surgery and mine remains as is just fine," the woman explained.
"I started dilating with my then boyfriend at 17, and it took about a year before we had intercourse as you normally would.
"He didn’t have a very large penis, which helped a lot. My later partners had varying sizes of penises and I’ve never had any complaints.
"I think by now if I had intercourse with someone not mentioning it, they wouldn’t be able to tell something is different with me."
Similarly, Ally Hensley was 16 when she was told about her MRKH diagnosis, which took a mental toll on her growing up.
In an interview with Tyla, the author of Vagina Uncensored: A Memoir of Missing Parts said she underwent dilator therapy by using specially designed smooth cylinder-shaped objects called vaginal dilators.
"They said that when your knuckles turn white, you're doing it correctly," she said. "That's the that's the force of pressure that you need to do.
"To do that doesn't ever feel right for anybody, yet you're you've got to equate that with progress, and that's where I kind of started to associate intimacy with shame and intimacy with pain and pain with progress.
"And all the relationships that I made were unhealthy links."
Since coming to terms with her diagnosis, she uses her platform to remove the stigma and so nobody goes 'through what I had gone through'.
"It's lovely because MRKH is a part of my life, but it's not my life, it's not my identity. So I'm in this really wonderful, really great place where I feel quite liberated from it," Ally said.
"I know my worth. I hold firm boundaries between good and not-so good people. I am eager to see what happens next for me."
Topics: Health, Sex and Relationships
Anish Vij