MY SISTERS GAVE ME A DAUGHTER!

Cancer survivor Samantha became a mum thanks to her siblings’ incredible gift

- Brigid Auchettl

When cancer left Samantha Bryant infertile, her sisters Nikkita Brandand Rachel Male volunteered to make her motherhood dreams come true.

Now proud mum to four-year-old Starla, Samantha is forever grateful to Nikkita, 27, who donated her eggs, and Rachel, 39, who acted as surrogate, after stage-three ovarian cancer left her unable to conceive.

All four “parents” play a part in Starla’s life.

“It’s a gift I’ll never be able to repay,” Samantha tells Woman’s Day. “I have no words to describe what they’ve done for me… the only thing I can do is be a good sister to them and a good mum to Starla.”

Samantha, 44, was working as a midwife in Melbourne’s Frankston Hospital when she began experiencing intense pain in her pelvis in July 2003. An ultrasound revealed a mass in her abdomen.

Rushed into surgery to remove it, Samantha’s world shattered when she learned that her body was “full of cancer”.

“I went into shock,” recalls Samantha, who was 27 at the time. “I remember thinking, ‘Maybe they have this wrong…I’m fit and I have no family history, this can’t be happening.’”

GRUELLING TREATMENT

Given just months to live, Samantha started five months of intense chemotherapy. Battling hair loss, nausea and severe cramping, she then pushed through 35 days of radiation treatment before going under the knife to remove any residual cancer cells.