This is a series blog about how our journey to creating a family began, how we decided to bring children into our family, why we chose the path of childbirth rather than adoption, as well as transitioning and not letting this stop us.
Introducing Our Family
Firstly, I will introduce us. I’m S, a 25-year-old trans man. My husband, B, is also a trans male. We both identify as men and use he/him pronouns. We have both been on testosterone and had top surgeries. We have three babies and two cat members in our family.
It all began when me and B met in 2016. Firstly, we knew each other from a transgender support page on Facebook. We learnt we had mutual friends and had attended the same Prides and events. We became friends firstly, which then quickly progressed to more. Our relationship did happen fast, but we knew it was right. We moved in together after about 6 months, got our own flat a year after being together and started to talk about our future family.
Thinking About Our Future Family
Even as friends, we both knew that we were family-orientated and we wanted children, which we built our relationship around too. However, at the time, we did not know how that would happen. I personally did not want to get pregnant. I was not on hormones, as well as me having polycystic ovaries, which I was told would hinder my chances of conception as well as carrying a full, healthy pregnancy.
B had always wanted to carry his own child; however, he was on hormones. As we well know, we are led to believe by professionals that this affects your fertility, which we believed at the time. As do many young trans or non-binary people, because they are still told today by gender specialists that hormones affect fertility, instead of that there is no evidence currently to support this claim. Egg freezing is also not provided by the NHS and is too costly for a lot of people; therefore, you feel you have no choice but to give up that chance to carry a child.
So we thought our only option was to adopt.
Considering Adoption
My husband had social services involved as a child, and it was not the process we ideally wanted to go through. Not because we did not want to take on a child that needed a loving home, because we did, and it is something we are still thinking about for the future. However, we knew again just how much we would have to go through in this process, being young and being transgender too.
We did speak to our local council and were met with discrimination straight away. We knew it would be a hard process, but we were shut down the moment we mentioned we were trans. First, they said we were young and needed life experience. But we were the legal age to adopt, so we challenged that. To then get back saying because we were transgender, we had to either stop our transition or wait until we were fully transitioned, as it would impact any child we took on.
It was a shock to hear them actually say this to us because neither option was something that was even possible. One, we were proud to be trans, and it is not something that you just do and it is done. It will always be a part of our identity and personal life, which a child would be involved in.
Deciding Adoption Wasn’t Right for Us at the Time
I know this is just one local council, and there are many stories out there where adoption has been successful for many LGBT+ people. There are some amazing agencies and local authorities that work with LGBT+ adopters; however, this set us back, and we knew it was just not a process we were ready for. So we didn’t know where to go from there. We did look into surrogacy briefly, but it was very costly.
Hearing Stories From Trans Men Who Had Carried Children
It was not until we heard stories in the media about trans men carrying who had been on testosterone. These were mainly in America at the time. Thankfully, now there are a lot more trans birth stories in the media to spread awareness and fight the discrimination we as trans people face when having a family.
This is why we want to get our story across so others know that it can be done. Whichever way you personally want to create your own families, whether that involves children or not. Therefore, more to spread awareness that testosterone does not make you infertile, to fight back against the prejudice that we have faced as pregnant men.
Looking Into Having Our Own Baby
That is when we looked into how we could have our own baby. As IVF, again, was not an option we could take due to personally not having the amount of funds for it. It is an expensive and lengthy procedure that we just could not afford.
We had very close friends who had used a known sperm donor and done artificial insemination at home, which we started researching. Our friends were trans male; however, they were not on hormones or had any surgery. B was on testosterone for about three years and had chest reconstructive surgery that year. Other than a few stories in the media, we did not personally know anyone at the time who had taken this route into parenthood.
Coming Off Testosterone and Trying to Conceive
We consulted a gender endocrinologist who supported us, so B came off testosterone with his support, doing blood tests and managing his mental health. Surprisingly, it went smoothly. B felt great and had no changes to his appearance or voice. His dysphoria was manageable even when his menstrual cycles returned around 7 months after stopping hormones.
This is when we started to look into donors and how to achieve pregnancy.
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