Monday 

I call Vince around 6:00 a.m. to ensure he and Jake are up and getting ready for school. I ask if he is going straight to Children’s. He tells me he wants to come see me first. I agree. I would like to spend some time with my husband. My mom helps me get up and take a shower. I fix my hair and put on make up. I’m determined to get well as soon as possible. My baby needs me. 

Around 8:30 Dr. Helling arrives. He is covering for my doc. Dr. Helling was my mom’s doctor when she lived here. They talk for a few minutes. He tells me I can go home today, BUT I must stay home and take it easy. He doesn’t want me at Children’s. I think about it for a few minutes and tell him quite honestly that I cannot stay away and, if he feels like I truly need to rest, then he should keep me another day. We decide I should stay another day. I want to go, but I want to be well enough to take care of my child. I call Children’s. The baby is doing so well she will be moved off the ICU floor to the main floor later today. This is great news. 

Vince arrives and is shocked to see me cleaned up with make up on. While my mom leaves to grab some lunch, I have Vince walk with me down the hall. He is amazed I’m up and moving. (With my first c-section, I was not out of bed for three weeks.) My new nurse is also amazed because I am also refusing pain medication. I’m determined. I will leave here tomorrow. 

Vince hangs out with me a little while, then leaves to go spend time with our baby. While he is gone I sleep and have a terrible dream. In my dream my baby girl is taken away from me. I keep reaching for her, but she is out of reach. I keep calling for her, but my cries are not heard. I sleep fitfully and awaken with tears on my cheeks. I’m sure this is because of what transpired the day before. 

I get focused. I call for a pump so I can start producing breast milk for my baby. The birth certificate coordinator stops by and I complete all the paperwork. I reschedule my doctor’s appointment since I had the baby early. I send out an email to my friends and co-workers announcing the birth of our baby girl. I keep looking at the digital pictures of my baby to burn her image in my mind. 

I then start feeling down. Depressed even. I’m sure this is to be expected. I call Vince. He tells me he is on his way back to me. I ask how the baby is. He says he needs to talk to me when he arrives. I ask what’s wrong. He says nothing is wrong, but he wants to talk to me in person and not while he’s driving in traffic. I watch some television to keep my mind occupied until he gets here. 

My mom returns and we chat for a while. She has had lunch with a friend of hers, so we talk about that for a while. Vince arrives around 3:00 p.m. He sits next to me and tells me that we need to talk. He asks me if I want my mom there. Mom agrees to leave to let us talk. I say no. I want her here. 

Vince tells me he has spent the majority of the afternoon with a pediatric endocrinologist. He pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to me. There’s a bunch of drawings on the page. There are words that I recognize and that scare me a bit. 

Vince starts walking me through what is written down. At Children’s they first checked to see if our child had adrenal hyperplasia. Our baby does not. Vince informs me that this is a very good thing as this condition is more serious that what we previously understood. Vince then points to the next section of the page and starts talking about the 46^th chromosome. This is the chromosome that determines sex. XX is female, XY is male. Basically, all babies start out as female in the womb. During fetal development, the appropriate message is sent to make the gonads turn into the proper parts and pieces. If the 46^th is XX, the gonad will turn into ovaries. If the 46^th is XY, the gonad will turn into testes. The appropriate hormone (estrogen or testosterone) is produced. 

Once adrenal hyperplasia was eliminated, a sonogram was performed on our child. The sonogram revealed that our child was missing ovaries, fallopian tubes and a uterus. There appeared to be one teste. There was also a small gonad that was underdeveloped.  

Vince stops at this point and asks if I have any questions. I tell him to continue. He pauses and tells me that, at this point in the conversion with the doctor, he was told that our daughter was actually our son. He tells me that a chromosome test is being done to determine what our child is at a genetic level. It will take a day or so to get the results. (The hospital put a rush on this – it normally takes three weeks.) 

I am shocked. How can our little girl actually be a boy? I think about the genitalia. How can they turn that into a penis?  

The three of us talk for hours. We talk about the reconstructive surgery our son would have to face. Will he be able to perform sexually? Will he be able to enjoy a sexual relationship with his partner? Will this affect his sexual orientation? How will he handle social relationships? What will we tell our family? How can I go back to all my friends and co-workers and say, “Oops, that announcement I sent out about my little girl was wrong?” What do we tell our family?  What about Jake? He wore his “big brother” shirt to school today and told everyone about his little sister. How will he handle this? 

We decide that, for now, we will keep it to ourselves and not make any announcements. After all, the chromosome test still needed to come back. What if that showed he was a she again?

At this point we get quiet. My mom asks if she can go to Children’s and spend time with the baby. “The baby.” Victoria is gone. We just have “the baby” now. Vince and I never bothered to pick out a boy’s name. Vince needs to leave because his mom and dad need to return home and someone needs to be there with Jake. I come up with a plan. While mom is gone I want to research this on the internet. Vince will pick up Jake and bring him back so we can discuss this as a family. Maybe I can find some advice on the web on how to talk to a nine-year-old about this. Geesh.  

Mom and Vince leave. I start scouring the web. I am shocked and discouraged about the information I find. I see terms I never thought I would encounter in my life – intersex, hermaphrodite, pseudo hermaphrodite, Turner’s, Klinefelter’s, mosaic – the list goes on and on. It is overwhelming. 

I close the laptop and say a payer. I ask God to give me the words and the wisdom to talk to Jacob. I ask him to open Jacob’s mind so that he can receive and understand the information. I pray for God to give Vince wisdom.  

Vince and Jake arrive around 8:00 p.m. We start to talk. 

I ask Jake if he remembered seeing the baby go to the hospital yesterday. He says he does and that he doesn’t understand why Tori had to go. I tell Jake that we need to talk about that now. 

I ask Jake if he knew what the differences between girls and boys are. He proudly informs me that girls have a vagina and boys have a penis. It’s almost with the attitude of “didn’t you know that, Mom?” I tell him he’s right. I tell him that, when a baby is born, one of the first things the doctors look for is to see if the baby has a vagina or a penis. Every now and then, they cannot tell what the baby has for sure, so they have to look inside the baby to see what it is. 

I then ask Jake if he knows that there are differences inside of us between boys and girls. He says he does not. I remind him that girls can have babies and boys cannot. He says, “oh yeah, I know that.” I tell him that is because we have different parts on the inside. Inside me I have ovaries. This is where the eggs that make the baby are made. The ovaries are connected to fallopian tubes. This is the slide that the eggs ride to get to the uterus. The uterus is where the baby stays while he or she is being made. I ask Vince to tell Jake about the parts that he and Jacob have on the inside. They talk about testicals and how those work. Jake is fascinated.

I tell Jake that, since they could not tell for sure if our baby was a boy or girl, they looked on the inside to see what was there. He immediately becomes concerned about how this is done. I tell him about sonograms and how those work and remind him of the sonogram pictures we have of the baby. 

Once he is comfortable that the baby wasn’t hurt, I tell him that they found boy parts in our baby and no girl parts. Jake’s face brightens.  

“You mean I have a brother? I always wanted a brother,” he says.  

We tell him that we aren’t sure yet and that tests are still being run. The last thing we want is for Jake to announce that he has a brother and then we find out something different again. After all, the first doctor was wrong. The second one could be wrong too. I tell Jake that he doesn’t have to tell anyone at school anything. If anyone asks how the baby is doing just tell them “fine.” Vince and I tell Jake that we love him and let him know he could ask us any questions. After a few minutes he asks,  

“Am I still a big brother?” 

We tell him he is. He is happy. Vince and Jake leave. 

During the next few hours Vince and I grieve for the little girl we lost – me in my hospital room and Vince at home in our bed. I pray. Vince prays. God helps us to let go of our little girl and allows us to feel joy for the little boy we gained. 

I continue my research. I alternate between reading and praying for the next several hours. During my last prayer, when I am most desperate, God tells me very clearly that everything will be okay. 

My phone rings. It’s my mom. She is on the way home from Children’s. Our baby was awake and alert and feeding well. She tells me she went to lay him down after his last feeding, but he became very alert so she stayed longer. My heart is happy. My baby is fine. 

I sleep for an hour or so until Mom arrives. She tells me about her evening. When she arrived and signed in one of the nurses asked if she was Baby Sharpin’s grandmother. When she said she was, one of the nurses said, “Oh, man!” Immediately becoming concerned, mom asked what was wrong. Apparently, nothing was wrong. It turns out that the nurse was holding our child in her arms. Apparently, all the nurses were taking turns holding our baby and her turn had just started. They were setting a timer for 15 minutes so that everyone got a chance to hold him. When mom got to the room with the baby, she started talking to him. He immediately became alert. Mine and mom’s voice sound identical. (If you don’t believe me, just ask my husband.) She talked and fed the baby until he finally went to sleep. Mom seems at peace and that puts me at ease. She changes clothes and goes to sleep. She sleeps soundly. I cannot sleep. I’m excited that I am leaving here tomorrow and that I will see my new son.