Friday 20 April 2012

Ever Heard the Story of the 'Pregnant Man'? Well Here It Is

The guy i'm talking about is Thomas Beatie. He is a transgender man (meaning he was born a female) and was recognized by Guinness World Records in 2010 as the world's "First Married Man to Give Birth". So like i wrote, he was born a female and decided to undergo sex reassignment (in which he had a chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy) to become a man but kept his reproductive rights which means that he still had a uterus and functioning ovaries. Actually i'm confused whether to use 'his' or 'her' while referring to him. Or her. Well you see my point.

                             Thomas Beatie when he was still a woman
Anyway the guy is now legally male and got married to a woman, Nancy. So somehow this isn't a same-sex marriage and he and his wife are afforded all the federal rights of marriage.  Unfortunately his wife suffered from endometriosis, a gynecological medical condition in which cells from the lining of the uterus appear and flourish outside the uterine cavity, most commonly on the ovaries. The summary of it is that his wife was infertile. But he still wanted a biological child. So what did he do? He decided to carry the pregnancy. He stopped his testosterone (a male sex hormone produced by the testes which encourages the development of male sexual characteristics, stimulates the activity of the male secondary sex characteristics, and prevents changes in them following castration) injections, which meant that his menstrual cycle resumed (seriously this sounded weird typing it) so he didn't have to take any fertility drugs to aid his pregnancy. Doctors discriminated against him and his wife and refused to help them due to their religious beliefs. Health care professionals refused to call him by a male pronoun or recognize Nancy as his wife. Well things weren't easy for him. The first doctor they met with was a reproductive endocrinologist. He was shocked by their situation and told him to shave his facial hair (of course who will be comfortable doing things -which are supposed to be done to a woman -to a man). And when i say 'things' i mean checkups oh before your minds go elsewhere. After spending thousands of dollars, the doctor eventually told them that he couldn't treat them any longer, saying that him and his staff felt uncomfortable working with someone like him. They ended up going from one doctor to another and by the end, nine doctors had been involved. Eventually they got access to a cryogenic sperm bank and purchased anonymous donor vials, then resorted to home insemination. Finally he got pregnant with triplets but it was ectopic, meaning that the pregnancy occured outside the womb.It was life-threatening and required surgical intervention, and he lost all the embryos and his right fallopian tube. He didn't give up though.

                      Him while pregnant
He got pregnant a second time and gave birth to a baby girl named Susan Julliet Beatie in July 2008. He got pregnant two more times and gave birth to two more boys, Austin Alexander Beatie and Jensen James in June 2009 and July 2010 respectively.

He just recently seperated from his wife of 9 years and underwent his final female to male gender reassignment surgery in which he acquired a new 'equipment'. I wonder what that is.



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