"It's A Girl!"

"It's A... we'll get back to you."

How surreal this scenario is for parents of a newborn.

How frightening.

Hours, days, and weeks can sometimes pass without a definitive answer to what we thought was the most basic of questions. How alone we feel in this dreadful panic. How do we announce to the world that nature created a unique child for us to care for? How do we calm the collective fear when we are unable to provide the news about the birth of our daughter or our son? In the bleakest moments of our lives, this is certainly one of them.

Take a deep breath.

The truth is that it is estimated that some type of atypical genitalia occurs in one out of every two thousand births. As rare occurrences go, this is not. So how is it that until we are faced with this issue, we most likely never even heard of it before? We fully give credit to the medical society (the omission of the word "professionals" is not an oversight) that has continued to base treatment of atypical genitals on an outdated excuse for protocol that promotes isolation, shame and secrecy for both the parents and children.

Imagine this very different scenario:

The news your child has been born unique will never be easy to hear. There is simply no way to soften such unexpected and unwelcome news. Suppose though, that you are met immediately with open and honest information. Perhaps this information is not specific to your baby, but about other babies born with the same (only uniquely different) condition. A knowledgeable grief counselor shares your sorrow and shock. The offer is made to introduce you to other parents who have found themselves on the same path. You are able to absorb the information in a safe environment, knowing that one thing is certain: You must be an advocate for your baby, and you are part of a community.

A new Patient Centered ~ and therefore also Parent Centered ~ Protocol is currently being finalized. Even in it's incomplete version, hospitals around the world are practicing it, sadly accepting that fifty years of doing something a certain way doesn't make it right. BodiesLikeOurs.org is enthusiastically promoting the new Protocol, and if you are the parent of a child born with atypical genitals we strongly encourage you to find physicians and hospitals that utilize it.

Certainly decades ago, based on then-current schools of thought, we can see how this protocol was accepted and practiced. Society was much narrower then. Men were masculine, women were feminine. It you were anything else, you certainly weren't public about it. We were repressed as individuals, society's structure was much more important than individual diversity. Doctors and scientists couldn't explain how a child could emerge so differently. Back then it made more sense to change the outward physical appearance of a child, tell their parents everything was fine now, and send the family home. In fifty years we have learned much to discredit this line of thought, yet the protocol still exists, practiced regularly by members of the American Medical Association.

To read personal stories from parents of people with Bodies Like Ours, click here.

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