A female genital mutilation survivor who nearly died from an infection after being cut with a dirty razor says she's taken her "power back" after life-changing surgery.
Amani Abdallah, 24, was left in agony after the FGM procedure was performed - which involved narrowing the vaginal opening.
She grew up in Sudan - where FGM is common practice - and was left struggling to urinate and in pain when she tried to be intimate with her partner.
The mum-of-one even had to have a c-section to give birth because she couldn't face the trauma of giving birth naturally.
But having her daughter, Maya, one, motivated her to have a surgery called deinfibulation - to open the vagina - and she can now urinate normally and have sex without being in pain.
Amani Abdallah, 24, was left in agony after the FGM procedure was performed - which involved narrowing the vaginal opening.
She grew up in Sudan - where FGM is common practice - and was left struggling to urinate and in pain when she tried to be intimate with her partner.
The mum-of-one even had to have a c-section to give birth because she couldn't face the trauma of giving birth naturally.
But having her daughter, Maya, one, motivated her to have a surgery called deinfibulation - to open the vagina - and she can now urinate normally and have sex without being in pain.
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00:00FGM is done under no anaesthetics. In my case, it was done by an old lady, known as the village
00:06cutter I guess, so she goes around and cuts girls. She will usually have a blade, a rusty
00:12that has been used on about five different girls, or maybe one, or you know, depends
00:16on when your turn is. So yeah, a blade and then equipments to stitch and things to put
00:23inside, so then when she stitches there is a gap space left for the urine to travel down
00:28underneath the scar tissue and exit through the last part that they leave open.
00:34So yeah, it's done under no anaesthetics. It's usually done in a village at home,
00:39so at the girl's home, so at my home for example in my case. So yeah, you're forcefully held down
00:47on the floor by about five different women or even six sometimes, depends on how strong you are.
00:52They usually do it between the age of four to fourteen. I don't know any girls that had it
00:56done at fourteen where I came from, usually we had it done at a very young age. I think Max is
01:00like six years old, because older than that you'd put up a fight and they really don't want you to
01:05put up a fight. These are all the types of FGM, so there are four types right. Many people practice
01:10it in like so many different ways. In my example, it was type three. Now type three can be done
01:16with partial or total removal of the clitoris, of the labia minora, or it can be done like how
01:25it was done to me, where they removed parts of the labia minora and kind of stitched it together
01:33to allow for scottish uniform, so it just shows off the area. And then type four is basically
01:39just anything like just the wounding of the clitoris, the just like scratching of the labia
01:48minora, and yeah some people just remove the clitoris and leave everything else,
01:53and some people just, yeah they just scrape off everything and they kind of, you know,
02:01stitch it together, which is extremely traumatic and it has many many consequences. Like
02:08when you're taking all these things away from a girl, you're taking away her ability to feel
02:12pleasure and feel sensations down there. It can affect your fertility due to repeated infections
02:17and it can also, you know, cause you to pass away when you're giving birth or immediately
02:23pass away due to immediate complications, like immediate serious infections that could happen
02:27to a girl straight after this has happened to her. And just because we're so young when this happens,
02:32where our bodies are very weak and fragile, and just from all the shock and the fear, a lot of
02:38us don't actually make it past that point. You know, where I came from, a lot of girls in Sudan
02:44sadly passed away from this, and the parents still continue to do this, which really
02:51really breaks my heart and makes me so angry. Giving birth whilst being stitched up like this
02:56with type 3 FGM was very difficult and it was considered a high-risk pregnancy by the midwife, so
03:04I was kind of given an option to have a c-section. Obviously they can't force you to have a c-section,
03:09but they did tell me all the risks that came with natural birth, just the risks of having
03:14stillborn due to the stress caused to the baby and to the mother as well. And as we know,
03:20baby feels everything that mama feels, so however you feel, baby's going to pick up on that
03:25basically. It's going to affect their kind of, you know, transition period from the womb to
03:33the outside world. So I didn't want her to come out stressed and I didn't want to
03:36pose any risk to her, so we went ahead with the c-section and it was a planned c-section and
03:42it was a very good experience to be honest. The midwives and my midwife during the whole
03:46pregnancy, she was absolutely incredible. She was like the mother I never had. This woman was
03:54so positive and so encouraging and so kind to me. Every single appointment she'd just,
03:59you know, come back home feeling so positive, feeling so good and feeling so reassured because
04:03of her. Yeah.