Thomas Beatie, a married man who used to be a woman, is pregnant with a baby girl
by: James Bone
A married man who used to be a woman says that he is pregnant and will give birth to a baby girl in July.
“How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” wrote Thomas
Beatie, 34, from the Pacific North West of the United States, in the
latest issue of the gay magazine The Advocate.
“Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.”
Mr Beatie was born female, named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender
reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to a woman.
He decided to carry a baby for his wife, Nancy, because she had a
hysterectomy years ago. He was able to get pregnant because he kept his
female organs when he switched genders.
“Sterilisation is not
a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest
reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive
rights,” he writes. “Wanting to have a biological child is neither a
male nor female desire but a human desire.” The couple, who have been
together for ten years, run a custom screenprinting business in Bend,
Oregon, where neighbours do not know that Mr Beatie was once a woman.
“Our desire to work hard, buy our first home and start a family was
nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would
carry our child,” he wrote.
Before becoming pregnant, Mr
Beatie stopped the testosterone injections he was receiving as part of
his gender reassignment. “It had been roughly eight years since I had
my last menstrual cycle so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly.
My body regulated itself after about four months and I didn’t have to
take any exogenous oestrogen, progesterone or fertility drugs to aid my
pregnancy,” he wrote.
The couple bought donor vials from a
cryogenic sperm bank and, facing resistance and prejudice from doctors,
resorted to home insemination. “Doctors have discriminated against us,
turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Healthcare
professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognise
Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family
have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m
transgender,” he said.
Mr Beatie’s first successful
insemination ended in a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy with
triplets that required surgery, resulting in the loss of all his
embryos and his right Fallopian tube. “When my brother found out about
my loss, he said, ‘It’s a good thing that happened. Who knows what kind
of monster it would have been?’,” he wrote.
The second
pregnancy resulted in a baby girl who is due to be born on July 3. “I
will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be
a family,” he wrote.
Mr Beatie would not be the first
transgender man to give birth, according to Lisa Masterson, an
obstetrician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.
“A
transgender man can be pregnant because he has the same organs as a
woman,” Dr Masterson said on the ABC Good Morning America show.
Dr Masterson said, however, that transgendered men face special health
risks resulting from their sex change. “It’s really important that he
doesn’t take any testosterone early on in the pregnancy and later on,”
she said. “That can cause male-type characteristics in the female
baby.”
Some of the Beaties’ neighbours in Bend voiced
scepticism about the pregnancy claim. One resident, Josh Love, told
ABC: “I couldn’t say that he looks pregnant. I can stick my stomach out
and almost make it look like that. I think it’s kind of bizarre. I
don’t know if I believe it or not.”
The Advocate said it had confirmed the story with Mr Beatie’s doctor.
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