Yesterday morning I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, my husband and I's first child.
He was unexpectedly born at home and when we got to the hospital they identified a problem with his genitals. A paediatrician looked at him at 12.30am this morning and referred him to her senior colleague, who woke me up at 1am to tell me that they couldn't say for certain whether my baby was a boy or a girl. My husband had gone home by then and I was on a ward surrounded by other mothers and their babies. He told me to "hold off on announcing it was a boy" for the time being.
The upshot is my baby has to have lots of tests done over the next few weeks to check his chromosomes and DNA. This is so far beyond anything I ever expected and I'm devastated. To be clear, I don't care if baby is a boy or a girl as long as they're healthy but from speaking with the consultant earlier it could be way more complicated than that, such as a girl with a lot of testosterone, or even us having to choose the sex. There could be a whole host of issues which will affect him or her in later life. I know the logical thing to do is to wait for the test results and go from there but I just can't get my head around it. We already told friends and family we had a boy and I'm dreading going home to a load of 'congratulations on your baby boy' cards.
My husband has gone home for the night and I'm sitting in the hospital with what looks like a perfect baby, and just can't believe that this is happening.
Has anyone gone through similar, or could offer any advice on how to deal with this?