Please ask yourself why you are so threatened with this word. It is simply a description used by medical professionals to refer to genitals that are not "normal" looking. It ONLY refers to the physical presentation of ambiguous genetalia, not to anything psychological or lifestyle related. If you have issues with the word, please start lobbying the American Medical Association. Forty years ago your child would have been labeled pseudo-hermorphrodite. Does that suit you better?

We (adult CAH women) are not trying to injure you with our truths. Blessedly, the journey of your daughters will be eased by our knowledge and activism. By the time they are seeking wisdom in their lives, it is us they will look to, as all people look to others of similar experiences to gain insight.

Whether a child's genitals have been "normalized" or not, he/she will feel other worldly. They are not quite like their mothers, not quite like their fathers... rather something inbetween. This can be healthy since we are all a unique mix, but for a child it is frightening. Medical experts only deal with intersex (again, their word not ours) physical conditions. Their discipline believes that by physically changing the outward appearance of a person that the problem is solved. They leave the most difficult aspects to the psychologists, because of course you cannot alter the brain of an intersex child (already bathed in androgens) with a scalple.

You hate to hear what we say, because if our truths are your child's truths, many things are already out of your control. More so than others parents, you have a vested interest in your child's gender assignment, orientation and lifestyle. How can it not be so when you allowed surgery to enable them to fit in... to be/feel normal?

As for doing the surgeries early:

My first memory is of when I was 14 months old in the hospital having my surgery. I remember being strapped to the crib bed. I remember where the bed was in the room; where the door was. In those days, parents were made to leave the room when injections were given. Barely speaking sentences, I remember telling my parents EVERYtime they had to leave, "If you hear someone crying, it isn't me."