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)