Pregnant' man stuns medical profession

A man who used to be a woman is five months pregnant, according to an article he has written for an American magazine that features a picture of him at 22 weeks, with facial hair and a man’s flat chest above his swollen stomach.

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Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman, describes himself as a “transgender male” in the piece which says his decision to have a child “has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals”.

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The article, entitled Labour of Love, appears in the most recent issue of The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based magazine with a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readership.

According to the piece, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.

Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, Nancy, in Bend, Oregon.

The couple, who have been together 10 years, wanted to have children.

Mrs Beatie, however, was unable to conceive, having suffered severe endometriosis and undergone a hysterectomy, her husband writes.

So the couple decided Mr Beatie should try to carry a baby.

He stopped the hormone injections and his periods returned, he writes.

After a year - and nine doctors - he was able to get pregnant using frozen donor sperm but the pregnancy was eptopic and required surgery.

But a second pregnancy was a success and the couple's daughter is due on July 3, the article states.

Mr Beatie describes the process as a challenge, listing the difficulties they encountered en route, including hostility from doctors to a situation that “sparks legal, political and social unknowns”.

The first doctor they approached “told me to shave my facial hair”, Mr Beatie writes.

Others turned them away.

“Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m transgender”.

“How does it feel to be a pregnant man?” he writes in the article.

“Incredible. 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. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child. “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

In the article, Mr Beatie says that to neighbours in “our quiet Oregon community”, he and his wife “are viewed just as we are - a happy couple deeply in love.”

Canada’s National Post said an editorial assistant with The Advocate confirmed it had verified the pregnancy with Mr Beatie’s gynaecologist. She added that the photograph of the pregnant man was Mr Beatie.

The couple, however, refused to give the Post further details, citing deals with American media outlets. “It’s a big deal and we want to be able to tell our story,” the Post reported Mrs Beatie as saying.

“We’d love everybody on board as long as they’re understanding and are going to tell our story and not their own.”

Neal Broverman, associate editor of The Advocate, confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that in addition to talking to Mr Beatie and seeing the picture of him pregnant, the magazine had spoken to his doctor to confirm he was indeed expecting.