Hello little buns
It is Stef, welcome back to my new home.
I have moved and I have not current... I've not.. I've not yet
Set up a permanent filming situation.
So right now I am filming in front of a wall in my living room.
HI LUCY!!
It's my giiirl
You want to come say hello?
Come say hello to my friends
Hello
Hello Lucy, say hello to the camera.
Say hello to the camera
People pleople.
Staple people weople.
Today I want to talk about
fertility.
I want to talk about whether or not trans women can have children
and I want to explain a little bit about that situation,
so let's start off with
pre-op versus post op trans women in terms of pregnancy and fertility.
So as of right now there is no easy or
accessible way for trans women to carry children
although uterus transplants are being developed to a point where eventually..
I'm sure that trans women will be able to physically carry the children in their body.
Right now that is not accessible. It has happened
with.. with cis women
having a uterus transplant to house a child..
You wanna play with your ball?
But it has not been done on trans women yet,
although there really is no difference because, you know, the main thing
would be making sure the child has hormones it needs to survive, and we can take those orally and
making sure that the organ itself does not reject the body.
So it's just a matter of making that procedures safe and accessible.
And that's all we really need for that.
Until that happens, however, we do not have,
you know, the option to carry children.
So what we can do is either have children naturally with somebody
a partner that has a uterus.
Or we can have, you know, some kind of surrogacy situation.
A situation with an in vitro fertilization.
Which is where they, they..
Place a baby basically in a womb and a uterus carries it to term that kind of thing.
Or there's adoption of course
Lucy what are you doing baby?
That's my lighting don't touch it baby, pretty girl, baby pretty girl.
There is also the situation, when it comes to trans women with testicles, okay?
With your
Whatever
Go-nads, I don't know what the word is
The situation of transwomen being able to produce sperm or really any trans person being
able to produce whatever their, you know, reproductive thing is that they need to produce.
If you can remember the ad with
eggs and it being like: "This is your brain"
"This is your brain on drugs" so that being fried up in the frying pan
Similar thing happens to your reproductive
organs on hormone replacement therapy.
Not necessarily outside, the outside changes as well but it doesn't
you know, wither in a way
Sorry... oh my god I'm a mess
There was a spider I was trying to kill for like five straight minutes
in that bathroom and then it disappeared, and I can't find it
And I just stepped on a little piece of kitty litter
and I thought it was a spider, and I almost had a heart attack
For me for example, I've been on hormones for two years.
I've been on estrogen
and t-blockers for two years so myyy..
Sperm producing body parts
Internally.. Are like a very... sad...
Excuse for a cis mans version, or a trans woman that is not undergoing HRT
It still produces sperm however, so it is not impossible for your partner to get pregnant, if you are on HRT.
This is very important.
If you are a trans person, a trans woman or a trans feminine person .. just somebody that is born
assigned to male at birth.
And you are on hormone replacement therapy, be aware that if you're with somebody that has a uterus..
it is possible to induce pregnancy
with your weakened
testicles, okay? It Is possible. So just be aware of that and take....
Precautions if you want to. That being said if you are trying
to have a natural pregnancy, if you're trying to get your partner pregnant.
You can do it.
If you've been on hormones, it will be harder to do. It will take more trying, but it is possible
There might be some people that it won't be possible for
but it is possible for some of us to still get somebody pregnant
after we've put on estrogen for a while, and of course if you have
not been on estrogen then it can still totally, you can still get somebody pregnant very easily
and just again, like I am speaking from
a transwoman experience, I'm not speaking from a trans male
experience, but I will tell you, the same thing applies for dudes that have been on testosterone
If you've been on testosterone for a few years, you are still able to conceive, so be very careful.
Be very very very very very careful. It is definitely way, way less
likely for a trans guy to conceive if he's been on testosterone for a while, but it is still.. there's still a sliver of a chance.
So just be aware of that and act accordingly. If you are not doing a
natural pregnancy, if you do not want to get pregnant in a natural way, by having sex or inserting
a semen into a uterus, okay?
You can do an in vitro fertilization and that involves usually freezing
Your goods. Well....
before using them.
A lot of trans folks with access to money, that they can spend will opt
to freeze their sperm or eggs before transitioning or before going on medical transition kind of things.
In order to be able to produce children of their own genetic
material. This is not something everybody has access to.
When I started transitioning I just did not have the money to
freeze my sperm, so I did not. I am kind of glad to know that it is possible to still do that, just in case.
So I might do that, we'll see. The costs vary when freezing your sperm from place to place.
I believe in Canada it's somewhere around a couple hundred for the year initial procedure
and then it's something like three or four hundred a year
to bank it. It could be different, that could be totally inaccurate
And it could even be covered by insurance, I'm not sure I'm not
positive. I know that to harvest and freeze eggs it is much, much, much more expensive
so keep that in mind if you are not
looking to, you know, if you're on the opposite side of the spectrum.
I just want to recap the
current two options we've gone over. So the first one is a natural pregnancy if you are a
trans woman for example
that has a partner with a uterus, you can have a natural pregnancy
whether you've been on hormones or not. And if your partner's a trans man
They can still get pregnant even if they've been on hormones.
If you want to induce a natural pregnancy, if that's something you want to do
and you are for example two trans people, (why is this hair in my mouth), trans men
If you want to induce pregnancy you can go off of
testosterone for a few weeks
basically until your cycle returns, which
might be a super dysphoric thing, so I'm not saying you should do this
I'm just saying this is something that Is possible and that
will increase your chances of getting pregnant to a place, where they are actually reasonably possible
Not just a sliver of a freakish of a chance, you know what I mean, and you might be thinking
Stef, why on earth would a trans man want to carry a pregnancy?
And ninety nine times out of ten they probably don't want
to, and that's totally cool. But a for the one out of ten, for example, it may be way smaller than that
Trans guy that does want to carry a baby, I'm not gonna stop them.
And you shouldn't either.
Let them carry a baby, if it's perfectly safe for both involved, which it is.
This has been proven, by the way, it has been proven that testosterone
in somebody that is carrying a child
does not have any adverse effect on the pregnancy.
I'm getting most of this information, I was just at a conference in Philadelphia
called The Trans Health Conference
The Philly Trans Health Conference.
And there was a panel all about for, like fertility for trans people on both sides of the spectrum so
I went there and I learned a bunch of stuff, and that's where I'm getting this information to you
I do not have the actual
studies in front of me, but I'm going off of what a very, very, very qualified doctor
told me. And I think I can trust this information, okay?
So there's that pregnancy, the natural pregnancy and
then of course there is an in vitro
fertilization, which just like the last one, you can do with a cis female partner or a trans male partner
depending on what everybody's comfortable with
Unfortunately right now uterus transplant is not a viable option.
However when that becomes an accessible and viable option, it is very likely that
trans women are going to be getting pregnant through in vitro
fertilization of that uterus transplanted in. Does that make sense?
I hope that becomes an option soon, because I would
love to do that. But not crossing my fingers, okay?
Given those three options, okay, you also have
Surrogacy, which I'm not really good at touch on because it's got nothing to do with transness and
Adoption, which i'm not going to touch on in-depth because it has nothing to do with transness, but it is a very, very good
option. There are so many children in the world already that need homes, that don't have parents, that don't
have families... and I think it would be amazing if...
What are you chewing on?
Lucy, where are you?
Whoaaaaa!
Lucyyy-poo!
You don't dig in the garbage!
Okay, that is going to be it for this video
I'm sorry I got off track with adoption. I just think it's a very
important thing for people to consider before they jump right to saying:
"Oh well I want my children to have my genetic material", which
is totally fair! I'm not going to say you should not have your own genetic children, but
adopted children are still your child if you adopt them.
And I think we should definitely pay more mind to that option
Anyways, until next time! Just remember, children are the future.
And if you do not want children, that is perfectly okay. I made this video just as kind of a
brief, vague 101 for trans people that are interested in fertility and childbearing and
child production, and whatever you want to call it. But I don't want anybody
to feel ever in their life, or my life, to feel pressured, that they have to
have children or have to raise children.
You don't have to do it. But I hope this was informative in some way and
that would be very cool. I love you so much!
Oh my gosh, thank you for hanging with me in my new house, I will see you soon
BYEEE
Hi Lucy, you pretty girl.