Pregnant man' Thomas Beatie gives birth to baby girl

2008-07-04T05:22:00.000-07:00

The pregnant man who conceived a child after a gender-reassignment operation has apparently given birth to a healthy baby girl.

“She’s really cute, really pretty,” a source told ABC News.

Thomas Beatie, 34, told People magazine that he had given birth at a hospital in Bend, Oregon on Sunday. “The only thing different about me is that I can’t breastfeed my baby. But a lot of mothers don’t,” he said, adding that he planned to publish a book about the experience this autumn.

The bearded Mr Beatie was born a girl and named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender-reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to Nancy. The couple, together for ten years, run a custom screenprinting business in Bend.

He decided to get pregnant because his wife had had a hysterectomy. He was able to conceive because he kept his female organs when he switched genders.

To conceive, Mr Beatie stopped the bimonthly testosterone injections he was receiving as part of his sex change.

The couple bought anonymous donor vials from a sperm bank and, struggling to find a doctor willing to help them, resorted to home insemination with a syringe bought from a vet that is typically used to feed birds.

“I actually opted not to do anything to my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day. I see pregnancy as a process and it doesn’t define who I am,” Mr Beatie told the TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in April. “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child,” he said.

Mr Beatie caused a sensation when he went public with his pregnancy in Advocate, a gay magazine. He posed holding his bulging naked stomach for a photograph reminiscent of Demi Moore’s headline-grabbing 1991 cover photo for Vanity Fair. “How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” he wrote. “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family,” he said.

A cameraman for the TMZ website filmed him leaving the hospital in a hooded sweatshirt, without a bulging stomach. In his Advocate article, Mr Beatie recounted the struggles he faced to have a child.

“Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Health care 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. His first successful insemination ended in a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy with triplets, 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.

Mr Beatie has said he may have more children, once he has experienced fatherhood.

Pregnant Man

Pregnant man' Thomas Beatie gives birth to baby girl