It's a bright spring morning in the middle
of the backwoods of Oregon,
and I am volunteering to cut trail
with my partner, Biff.
He's just ahead of me on the path,
and just suddenly I know that it's time for me to ask
the question that's been building up
between us for months now.
"Hey, Biff, do you want to have a baby?"
Silence.
He turns around, and I see that he is laughing at me.
"This is the stupidest idea you have ever had.
"No, I don't want to have a baby."
In his defense, we had our hands full.
We were actually already parents.
One year into our relationship,
his sister couldn't take care of her kids,
and they came to stay with us for a little while.
Well, a little while became a long while, became forever,
and our adoption of Haley and Riley
had just become final.
They were ages five and seven and we were just starting
to get that taste of freedom
that comes when you have big kids.
The second reason that he said no is because he knew
that when I asked if we could have a baby,
I was asking if I could get pregnant
and give birth to a baby.
This isn't some kind of feat of modern science,
I'm just transgender.
For me, that means that I was born female.
I was raised as a girl.
The best way that I had when I was a teenager
of explaining what was going on with me was
I used to joke that I was a gay man
trapped in a woman's body,
and as I got older, that literal feeling
of feeling trapped in the wrong body
got more and more pervasive and painful,
until it became literally unbearable
and I wasn't sure I could keep going.
And then I met a transgender person,
and I realized that it wasn't a joke at all.
I actually was a gay man trapped in a woman's body,
and this was great news,
because it meant that there was a solution to this problem,
and there was a name for it,
and there was a community of people
that I could go to, but most importantly,
it meant that I could stay alive,
and I could transition and I could be happy,
which is what I did.
I started taking testosterone and that made me look
like I do now, like every other gay man in Portland.
And it turns out that I'm the kind of transgender person
who was just, like, fine with just hormones.
I didn't have any other surgeries or anything,
which means that I have a fully functioning uterus
and totally healthy eggs, and Biff is not trans.
He's just a normal gay dude.
He's not normal, he's special.
But you know what I mean.
So between the two of us, even though we are two men,
we have everything we need to make our own baby,
and we've known dozens of other transgender men like me
with beards and everything who have given birth
to happy, beautiful children.
We knew it was possible, but it had been hard
for pretty much all of them,
and Biff was really worried about my safety,
navigating the world as a pregnant man.
But I live in a world
of rainbows and unicorns, and I just hoped
that it was going to be okay, and I also am not good
at taking no for an answer, so eventually he did say yes,
and I went to doctor and everything was
in good, working order.
I stopped my hormones and we started trying.
And a few months went by.
Nothing happened, and I started to think
maybe it wasn't going to happen for us after all,
and just when I started to feel peaceful about that,
I woke up one morning and I felt really gross.
And I had read all the pregnancy books, you know?
I knew everything about pregnancy,
and I had been tracking everything on the app, you know?
But it wasn't the right time for me to be pregnant,
and so I refused to take the pregnancy test,
and then Biff made me, and I took it,
and there were two lines, and I was pregnant,
and there was going to be a baby, and I was so excited,
but also super scared, 'cause you have to do a lot of things
to get ready for a baby, like pick a name
and buy diapers and learn how to take care of a baby.
Haley and Riley had been toddlers
when they came to live with us,
so I didn't know what to do with a baby.
And then my body started to change really quickly,
and all of those markers of femininity.
Everything just got bigger everywhere,
and I had anticipated this, that it would be
the worst part of being pregnant,
but it actually ended up being okay,
and I think it's because really early on in my transition,
I just had to accept the fact
that my body is going to be different.
I can't go back in time and be born
with a body that's more like Biff's or my dad's,
and I could spend the rest of my life
obsessing over all the things my body cannot do,
or I could get excited about the thing that it can do
that their bodies can't, which is to create life.
So that's what I did.
I just leaned into that,
and then I just let everything else go.
And right around this time, we had a chance
to tell our story publicly, and I don't know about you all,
but basically every story I've ever heard
about a transgender person has been,
something terrible has happened to us,
and that's, I think, why it had been so scary for me
to come out as trans,
because our lives are misery, says the media,
and I thought maybe we could tell a different kind of story.
Because, yes, there is hardship in being transgender,
especially for trans people who are not like me,
transgender women and trans people of color.
But for all of us, there's also joy and love
and resilience and family,
and I wanted to tell that story,
and I hoped the world was ready.
And we didn't think it was a big deal for me
to be a pregnant man, everybody else did.
And I don't know if they still say, "Go viral,"
but that is what happened to our story.
Basically overnight, pregnant man was everywhere,
like Yahoo! News, if anyone still reads that.
CNN, Washington Post, People Magazine: "Pregnant Man."
And I thought that maybe this is good, you know?
Maybe people are ready for this next evolution
and what it could mean to be transgender,
and I live in Portland, and let me tell you,
people were ready for my story in Portland.
In Portland, maybe if you see a pregnant man at Starbucks,
that's not the weirdest thing you've seen that day.
They were into it, you know?
And trans kids would come up to me with their parents,
like in the grocery store, and just say thank you
for helping them understand that there's more than one way
to be a man and more than one way to be trans.
A lady once told me that she adopted her niece, too,
and she thought it was marvelous that my body
could give me the life I deserve,
while also bringing new life into the world, but
outside of the Portland bubble,
not everyone was ready for this story.
I became really good friends with the puking emoji,
because I would just get hundreds of messages
on Facebook that was just that.
People would tell me that I wasn't a man at all,
I'm just a really ugly, hairy woman,
and that I was going to give birth to a monster,
and then one woman sent me a message that said,
"As a Christian, I hope that you give birth to a dead baby,
"because that baby would be better off
"than a baby that has to be born to someone like you."
I was six months pregnant when I read that message.
Now, I have been trans for a long time, 15 years.
Actually, at age 35, I am past the point
of average life expectancy
for a trans person in American today.
I think that I'm resilient and strong and powerful,
but the truth is, I started to lose hope
for our country and for trans people,
that we would ever be loved in the way we deserve,
and all of those stories started to seep in.
One night, I had a really horrible nightmare,
where I was giving birth, not to a baby, but to a monster
with two heads and the forked tongue and the tail,
and I woke up and I was crying and shaking,
and Biff was like, "What's wrong?"
and I couldn't tell him.
All I could say was, "They hate us,"
and I didn't really know that before, that people hate us,
and that fear that I was going to give birth to a monster
came with me into every doctor's visit.
I would always look
at the ultrasound and ask the technician,
"On a scale of one to ten, what are the chances
that I'm going to give birth to a monster?"
And I carried that fear with me
until I had to call the hospital
to let them know I was coming in to give birth.
I talked to the head nurse on the phone and I said,
"Listen. I'm a man, and I'm coming in to give birth
"in your hospital, and it is my expectation
"that you will make sure that I'm treated with integrity
"by every single person that comes into my room.
"Doctors, nurses, midwives, that person who comes
"to change my trash. I want them to understand
"what they're walking into, 'cause I can't deal with that
"on top of dealing with this."
And she said, "I got it."
And she did, and every single person that I worked with
at that hospital was amazing.
And Biff was there, and my dad came down
from Canada to be there, and my mother-in-law.
And it was two days of labor,
which it's called labor for a reason, it's hard work,
but then before I knew it, they're putting the stirrups up
and telling me, "Oh, it's going to be time to push soon,"
like, not a big deal, and I realized,
I had learned everything about pregnancy,
but nothing about actual childbirth.
My brain flashes to a book sitting unopened
on my bedside table.
It's called "Prepare to Push."
I had not read it, I was not prepared to push.
I start hyperventilating, panicking.
I turn to Biff and I say, "I'm so sorry,
"but I'm not. I can't do this, I'm not strong enough."
I turn to the midwife and I say,
"I'm going to die."
She is not phased by this, she has heard it before, I guess,
and she bends down and gets nose-to-nose with me and says,
"You are doing a good job. The best job.
"No one on Earth is doing as good a job
"as you are right now."
And this was like a magic spell.
I realized I could do this, and I held Biff's hand,
and I held my dad's hand, and I pushed,
and I pushed as hard as I could,
and at one point I looked down and there's just goosebumps
all over my arms and all over my legs and then,
I don't know what's going on,
but I start puking all over everyone,
and because I'm Canadian, I start apologizing to everyone
for throwing up on them while I'm in labor,
but eventually they start screaming at me to slow down
and stop pushing, just push in teeny-tiny bits,
and everyone is yelling, and there's all this noise,
and then everything stops,
and there's this wet slurping sound,
and then he's out.
And they hold my baby up in the light,
and he's glistening like all those movies you ever saw,
and he opens his mouth and he lets out his first cry,
and his voice echoes through me,
and all of that hope that I thought I lost,
it all comes rushing back, because a baby means hope.
It means you believe there will be a tomorrow.
That the world is good enough for your child.
And they put him on my chest, and he feels like a baby bird,
and before Haley and Riley run in
to meet their baby brother,
I look down at him and he has ten fingers
and ten toes and a full head of black curly hair,
just like me and that's when I realize
he could have been a monster.
He could've had two heads and a forked tongue and a tail,
and I would have loved him just the same.
To me, he would have been perfect.
Thank you.