I’ve had some good feedback about the first post and so I’m going to go into some more detail about the first couple of days after our kid was born. Our kid was 6 weeks premature so went straight into the NICU. All the usual newborn checks were done but there was obviously something they weren’t telling us. And looking at my kid even I could tell that not everything was as we’d expected. After all, we’d been told our kid was a girl but when they lifted them out of the c-section incision they said we had a healthy boy.
There was quite a bit of confusion going around but we were focused on having a healthy baby rather than anything else. And part of the problem is not enough doctors and nurses have knowingly seen intersex babies for themselves. I say knowingly because, as they cover in the documentary I linked to in the first post, lots of intersex people show no outward signs of it and it’s not until they need to see a doctor or get a scan for something invasive that they even know themselves. Speaking of doctors visits you might want to go watch the video from my last post from an intersex person with their tips on how they survive them.
And while I’m linking things I’ve got something I’d like you to listen to, it’s a podcast series. Doesn’t take too long but it does cover a lot of the reasons why gender is never as simple as we think it is. Here you go, especially the Gonads: X & Y episode.
Ok, where were we? Ah yes, the hours after our kid made their entrance. My clearest memory from a couple of the doctors was the look of pity on their faces. Pity mixed with shame. They looked at our kid as if they were broken. I’m not sure if I can ever forgive them for that. Because it made US think there was something broken with our kid. So when they started talking a day or two later about surgery at six months to two years we felt like we almost had to.
But that first day we were told we would just have to wait for the tests to come back to tell us what the problem was. They took blood to test his chromosomes, they inspected my kids genitals looking for clues, they did an ultrasound to check their gonads. And then they said we had to wait, they couldn’t give us a definitive answer. I know now that the answer to why our kid is intersex is immaterial. It doesn’t change how we’re raising them or how we feel about them.
The waiting is awful because you feel like you aren’t doing anything. So while we waited we just immersed ourselves in looking after our kid as best we could.
Till next time…
Parenting An Intersex Kid 