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I was born a boy but doctors secretly changed my gender days after birth - I only found out by mista

IN 1986, Sophie Ottaway was born with a very rare condition which required immediate surgery.

Cloacal exstrophy happens when the organs in the abdomen do not form correctly in the womb, resulting in babies born with organs such as the bladder or intestines outside the body.

Doctors had to operate to save her life.

Sophie was actually a boy, with a tiny, damaged penis but healthy testes.

But doctors advised Sophie’s parents that their baby’s male ­genitalia should be removed to avoid further complications.

The baby had to be registered by the following day, which meant they had to decide whether to tick male or female on the form.

Sophie’s parents Karen and John followed the surgeons’ advice.

“They were told not to tell me,” says Sophie, a warm and friendly 37-year-old who has since fully forgiven her parents for their decision.

“We are very close,” she tells me, “despite going through some rocky times in the past.”

Life changed for Sophie, who grew up in Beverley, East Yorks, when she was 22 years old and visiting her GP surgery for tonsilitis.

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She says: “I saw on the computer screen that I had XY chromosomes, had been castrated hours after birth, and an incision was made where a vagina would be.”

Although Sophie exploded at her parents in the moment, she buried her feelings about it all until 13 years later when, hospitalised during a Covid lockdown, it was discovered she had developed sepsis that had ended up in her intestines.

‘I went into 13 years of absolute denial’

This was what led her to decide to speak out.

Sophie was already aware that many children and young people were being groomed in gender ideology, persuaded to take puberty blockers, then set on a medical pathway for life.

She says: “At age 11, as I approached puberty, they put me on oestrogen because there’s no ovaries, and no testes to produce testosterone.

“This is what doctors are doing now to kids who wish to change gender — putting them on blockers.”

It was a lie when Sophie was told she had to take oestrogen for life because her ovaries had been removed at birth as a result of damage.

Sophie was born biologically male. “So obviously there were never any ovaries,” she says wryly.

She adds: “The time to tell me and try to get informed consent was at the point we introduced the endocrinologist. This is the time puberty blockers are being offered to kids, so I make that connection with what’s happening today.”

When feminists and others critical of the medicalisation of children with gender dysphoria have said that these drugs and interventions are harmful, we are often labelled bigots. But Sophie is speaking from personal experience, in the hope that she will be listened to rather than dismissed and vilified.

About five years ago, Sophie chose to stop taking the hormones, because “I was adamant that many problems in my life were being caused by them.

“I was about 4st heavier than I am now, and I wasn’t eating badly. I was having bladder pain beyond belief.

“I had fatigue and was quite angry a lot of the time.”

By then, Sophie had been taking oestrogen for 20 years, and decided enough was enough. She was told she should keep taking it because it was for bone density, to which she replied that she would have regular bone scans.

Sophie had no choice but to go on oestrogen, because the doctors prescribed it to her as a child — but surely she should be listened to when she warns of the effects cross-sex hormones have on the body?

Now that she no longer takes it, all her symptoms have improved.

She says: “We’re selling this idea of perfection in the guise of changing gender. You’ve got all of these problems and might be struggling because you don’t fit in at school, or because you like boys’ toys and you’re a girl, or vice versa. As someone who knows all about decisions made under time pressure and who has paid the price, Sophie’s understanding of the sales pitch being made to children before puberty is crystal clear.

She says: “You’ve got a sale based on a time pressure.

“We’re going to push you through this for the puberty blockers, we’re going to make that sale.”

Keen to stress that there is a big difference between a girl behaving “like a boy”, wearing boys’ clothes and haircuts, Sophie adds: “Puberty blockers are a different level to how we dress and which toys we favour.”

The idea being sold is that gender reassignment is the answer to all your problems, but Sophie says: “What you get is genital mutilation, castration, and a lifetime of dangerous hormones, which was my experience.”

As she points out: “Children can’t vote, they can’t drink, can’t drive.
“But you can choose to do something life-changing.”

Sophie hopes that by speaking out and telling her unvarnished truth, some children — and parents — might make a different choice.

She says that when she found out that she’d been born male, “I obviously knew I had urological problems, and I knew that I had no vagina because of the surgeries.

“I didn’t address it at that point. I was 22, in second year at university.

“I had a plan of my life. And dealing with this monstrosity was not in the plan. I got up the next day and went to university.

“I still had the same connection with my friends. I was still the ­person I was 24 hours ago.

“But I went into 13 years of ­absolute denial.”

She never told anyone about it, not even close friends.

‘When I came out of hospital I was raging’

Then, during the pandemic, Sophie found herself in hospital a couple of times, and it all came crashing down.

She recalls: “They thought it was a kidney infection, but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

“When I was born they had fashioned some female genitalia. Brown putrid fluid starting leaking out of the hole and it would not stop.

“I presented at the hospital and I had to tell them for the first time about what had happened to me.”

When doctors examined her, they saw that there was something very wrong.

It turned out there was a mass in her abdomen, which was the neovagina — inserted when she was a baby — and left to rot.

Sophie says: “I found out from my mum that they had inserted it when I was two days old, and that one day it popped out and was found in my nappy.”

Surgeons replaced it during a later operation, sealed it up, and left it, which is why it led to sepsis many years later.

“No one had been told it had been put back in,” says Sophie.

Up until this point she had thought that the surgeon had simply operated to save her life — “which he did, but he also did a hell of a lot of other stuff that was unnecessary.”

What’s more, the doctors failed to do something that was necessary — namely, address the complex urological problems that have plagued Sophie all her life.

She says this “is one of the things that has the biggest effect on having any kind of intimate relationship. And yet the one thing that they could have fixed is my incontinence.”

She tells me: “When I came out of hospital, I was raging at that point.”

And she thought that by speaking out, she might be able to help those who think they are in the wrong body.

Sophie says: “A lot of them are being groomed to feel that way or question those thoughts in the first place by the school and the system and the media. Those kids need help.”

A much better solution, she argues, would be to divert funding currently being used for puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery and ­allocate it to children’s mental health services and counselling.

Sophie says: “We can work with that person to find out why they are feeling like this.

“Then, maybe when they become an adult, they might be mature enough to be properly informed and consent to any changes to the outer body.

“It is often assumed I am transgender, but I really don’t like labels. I am just Sophie.

Poised for a backlash from the more extreme trans activists, Sophie makes it clear that she respects any adult’s decision to choose that path — so long as they are properly informed.

But she is clear that this is never appropriate for children.

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“I don’t want this to happen to any other baby born with this condition,” she says.

“We have to find better ways to support kids to live in the body they are born with.”

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