HER smiles belie her concern for her firstborn, who had arrived two weeks early. She ponders, for the umpteenth time, whether the prescribed drugs she had taken for the spotting she experienced during her pregnancy had anything to do with her son, now 19, being born with an ambiguous sex organ.

She worries that the young man will never have a chance at a normal life, recalling that the last time she had seen him naked, his penis had measured around two to three inches. That was a few years ago after he’d turned 16-years-old.

The 37-year-old mother of two other boys and a teenage girl – whose name has been withheld so as not to reveal the identity of her son – recently sat down with the Sunday Observer, along with her own mother, to share her child’s experience since his birth.

She said that she is afraid that her son will be ridiculed by women with whom he may become sexually involved.

“Sometimes mi feel it, fi seh if him finally find a female, that will be his hindrance. Yuh know, these times they [women] will seh ‘man caan satisfy them and so’,” said the concerned mother.

“I know that he’s always such a nice gentleman and will take care of the young women. So just to know that he was born with the condition, I hope that he doesn’t have a problem in that way because the girls want to be satisfied.”

An ambiguous sex organ is a condition which presents in one in every 20,000 babies born in Jamaica annually, according to estimated figures by Dr Collin Abel, paediatric surgeon and urologist at Bustamante Children’s Hospital in Kingston. That is up from a figure of one in every 40,000 children, who presented with the condition in 1999, Abel said.

A child with an ambiguous sex organ or ambiguous genitalia, as the condition is referred to by doctors, appears to have both male and female genitalia. It is such, that parents and doctors are unable to say with any certainty whether a child is male or female, without conducting a battery of genetic tests.

In the case of the mother of three, her firstborn presented with the condition in what may be seen as a typical way.

“There was a hole underneath, and a little bump on top. When I went to the hospital and looked at him, I said ‘doctor, how him penis look suh?’,” recalled the mother.

The doctor’s response, she said, was ‘cho, he will grow that out’.

But the physician’s prediction proved false; the condition persisted.

“When he urinated, it came from underneath. When he was three [years old], we really got concerned, and went to a urologist,” the mother told the Sunday Observer.

The urologist referred her to a second doctor, who performed corrective surgery on the then three-year-old boy.

However, the family went broke after that initial $22,000 surgery, and could not fund subsequent follow-up visits.

Today, his mother says her kid is the perfect son, and a decent human being.

“He’s everything a mother would want in a child; mannerly, respectful and obedient. He keeps his friends from primary school,” noted his proud mother.

But it is for precisely this reason that she harbours concerns over his emotional well-being, having regard for the condition with which he was born.

“Mi ask him the other day if the penis did grow [since she last caught sight of it on his 16-year-old body), and him seh it alright. But I think sometimes he’s frustrated,” she added.

His 67-year-old grandmother is equally concerned about his chances to have a wholesome relationship with a woman and how this will impact his happiness over the long term.

“He is my special baby,” said the senior citizen, who contributed to the cost of the surgery her beloved grandson had to undertake almost two decades ago.

His mother, meanwhile, though uncertain whether the prescribed drugs were responsible for her son’s condition, is warning pregnant women against taking any sort of medication.

“Avoid taking drugs in the first three months because it handicapped the child during its formulation,” she said.

It is a warning that was earlier echoed by Dr Santosh Kulkarni, consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist with the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).

“Some hormonal preparations have male-like hormonal activity. Therefore, such drugs should not be taken by women who are planning to be pregnant,” cautioned Kulkarni in an interview with the Sunday Observer earlier this year. “Women with a previously affected child can undergo tests in the womb for their second pregnancy,” he said.