A Thursday morning in September about 10 years ago is a day the Ezehs often remember in a deep reflection. Mrs Ifeoma, Okoronkwo Ezeh’s wife, then in her 30s, welcomed a special child, one whose features still confuse her till date.
Mrs Ezeh, now 51, who gave birth at the Wesley Guild Hospital, Ilesa, Osun State, told Sunday PUNCH that this baby was born with genitalia features that looked tinier than the size of a regular manhood, a pair of undescended testes which appeared above the penile area, resting in what looks like a scrotal sac and an opening underneath the manhood said to be that of the female sex.
“I felt something was off with how the nurses reacted after they brought out the baby that Thursday evening.
“They simply told me that I had given birth to a baby boy, and then moved to clean him up. I was the one who said they should show his father first because we had been trying for a male child for years.
“We had given birth to five girls before the baby came so it was like a dream come through for the family giving birth to a ‘male’ child after all these years,” the Ebonyi State indigene said.
Her husband, she recounted, did not come to see her for a few minutes even after the baby was taken to him to see, and it was quite unusual. Ifeoma said her husband would be the first person she often saw whenever she opened her eyes after a delivery.
She said it was much later that he came and told her that they needed to take the child somewhere because there were some issues with the child.
“I was too weak to begin to think of anything bad. Since my husband had confirmed then that he was a boy, I didn’t really think it was any need to bother over any ‘issues’,” Ifeoma noted.
She said the child was wrapped in swaddling clothes and was taken to the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife, Osun State, for further assessment by daybreak.
Ezeh told Sunday PUNCH that his joy was dampened when he set his eyes on the genitals of the child as the nurses brought him.
“It was there (genital area) that my eyes first went to, and what I saw confused me. I had to feel it first to be sure I was not hallucinating. I asked the nurses what it was and they said it was nothing to worry about because they would “work on it.”
“I was still uneasy because in all my years on earth I had never seen such a thing before. I didn’t want to make my wife cry so I didn’t tell her what it was. I just told her we needed to go to Ife to see what could be done to help our child,” he added.
On getting to the OAUTH, Ezeh said the doctors first examined him and told him to bring the child back after one month for the first surgery.
As they went back home, Ezeh said he opened up to his wife who he said was also amazed at what she saw.
