Intersex baby born in Moscow - a dilemma for geneticists and parents to tackle

The long-awaited baby born to Sergey and Olga D., a family of young Muscovites, has turned out to be intersex, Russian website Life.ru reports.

Twenty-year-old mother-to-be enjoyed an easy pregnancy and continued to work well into her third trimester.  Her coworkers even joked that she might go into labor while in the office.

Young parents-to-be did not care for the sex of the baby.  Olga specifically requested that the doctors do not tell her the gender of her baby.

“We wanted it to be a surprise,” says grief-stricken Olga.  “We wanted this baby very much.”

The baby was born on time.  The young mother could barely contain tears when she heard the cry of her firstborn.  However, Olga could not understand why the doctors delayed bringing the baby to her.  Several hours after the delivery, the doctor attempted to explain to the new mother that her baby was born a hermaphrodite.  The newborn possessed both male and female characteristics.

“Doctors say that the baby is part girl, part boy, and he can be successfully transformed into either a boy or a girl,” said Sergey.

Five days after the delivery, Olga was discharged, and her baby transferred to the pathology department of the Tushino Hospital.  Now the medical team is awaiting the results of genetic testing.  The parents are praying that the correct decision is made.

"In this case, only geneticists can tell whether this baby is predisposed to either the female or the male end of the gender continuum, " tried to explain the young father.  "We’ll love our baby all the same, boy or girl."

According to the experts, the paramount task is to correctly identify the underlying genetic predisposition of the person.  The actual gender assignment surgery is fairly straightforward.

"It’s not uncommon for an intersex child to be raised as a boy, and then to begin self-identifying as a girl at puberty," says a Tushino Hospital doctor. "Unfortunately, all too often the decision of gender assignment is made not in the interest of the child’s wellbeing, but based on what surgery is simpler to perform."