Hermaphrodite baby shocks a Bogor village
Hermaphrodite baby shocks a Bogor village
BOGOR (JP): Alan, also known as Triwulan, has become a hot
topic in the past few months among villagers of Sukadamai in West
Bogor.
The nine-month-old baby has both male and female genitalia.
According to her mother, Sriwati, 27, she and her husband,
Ulung Sukmala, 30, a scavenger, had tried their best to seek help
from local doctors and dukun (sorcerers) for their first child.
Sriwati said nobody in the area was able to explain the
presence of a penis on the baby girl's vagina. They provided no
clear advice on how to handle the remarkable condition.
"When I brought Alan to a doctor, for example, the physician
only told me that this (case) is from God. The doctor asked me to
just wait and see until my baby reached the age of two or three
years to find out whether Alan would be a boy or a girl.
"The doctor told me that my baby is too young to be
hospitalized," Sriwati told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
She said the baby was born as a girl. She and her husband
named their new born Triwulan.
A few days after giving birth, tiny gold earrings were
inserted into the baby's ear lobes as an expression of the proud
mother's affection.
However, approximately 50 days after giving birth, the new
mother noticed a strange found strange tumor-like growth on the
child's vagina. She said the tumor grew bigger and eventually
took the form of a penis.
She said the child began to urinate through this new organ.
A few weeks later, she said she and her husband decided to
change their baby's name to a boy's name Alan, and the earrings
were removed.
Sriwati said the couple worried the infant would continue to
develop male characteristics.
The mother said she hoped for a miracle because they had no
money to finance the presumably expensive surgery required to
rectify the abnormality.
"Our daily life totally depends on the small amount of money
earned by my husband from selling used cardboard he collects from
garbage bins," Sriwati said.(21/bsr)