Oh, the Irony

I try to be very open-minded about a lot of things. Really, I do. When the world got wind of Thomas Beatie, the first “man” to give birth (“Pregnant Man”), there was chatter from many different corners about him and his pregnancy. You know the usual sirens: the skeptics, the religious right, the dumbfounded, the jubilant, the indifferent. I just shrugged and went with it, because, heck, he really used to be a woman, and let’s face it – he kept his female reproductive organs, even though from the waist up he looks like a male. As I understand it, Thomas underwent an elective mastectomy to remove his breasts and then started a regimen of hormones to achieve some more masculine features such as increased body hair and a pretty convincing facial beard. Thomas is currently married to a woman, and it was their joint decision to have him conceive and carry their offspring. He gave birth – vaginally, mind you – to their first child back in June. A baby girl, I believe. Congratulations are in order.

I don’t claim to understand the trans-gendered community any more than your average consumer, but I do like to think of myself as pretty accepting of people, no matter what their circumstances. I once heard a long bit on NPR about a young boy who knew from a very early age that he was a she and his parents helped him through the process. He was 10 or 12 or something, and I was reduced to tears. The agony that the child suffered, even that young, at having to be a girl trapped in a boy’s body was heartbreaking. I can relate to the psychic pain and certainly respect decisions people make in order to be happy; in these cases, to be who they really are.

Well, here we are in November, just a few months after the birth of child #1, and Thomas has announced that he is in the first trimester with child #2. To be completely honest – and why not? It is my blog, after all - when I heard this news yesterday, I was not happy for Thomas or his family. I felt cheated in the cosmic, universal way. I compared my broke-ass reproductive parts against those of Thomas, the woman-turned-man-with-retained-woman’s-parts-to-reproduce-and-can-reproduce-despite-having-lots-of-testosterone-shots-and-surgeries-to-look-like-a-man, made me sad and then mad. I have taken every step possible to achieve biological motherhood. In fact, I’m repeating the last great hope right now. And what it requires is shooting myself full of the female hormones that my body does just not produce in quantities enough to achieve or sustain a pregnancy. Bitterly, I thought, how great for Thomas that he can still produce those same female hormones despite his attempts to become a full male. And what’s the name of the reproductive endocrinologist that’s making all this happen for Thomas? Maybe I should get his contact information…

You know, it’s bad enough to be outdone by other fertile women, but somehow, this is more stinging than the cycle of usual emotions that an infertile feels when hearing of a pregnancy: surprise, maybe a touch of jealousy, sometimes self-pity, then usually sadness, and ultimately happiness for the expecting. Look, I won’t be lamenting this for too long. In fact, I think I’m over it already. I just wish I were as lucky as Thomas is in the motherhood department (I realize that taken out of context, this sentence could be very funny and/or quizzical). Congratulations are in order for Thomas’ second pregnancy.