Transgender Dad Announces Pregnancy a Year After Miscarriage
A transgender father of two adopted children in Oregon announced that he and his husband are expecting their first biological child this summer.
Married couple Trystan Reese and Biff Chaplow, who live in Portland, announced last week that they are expecting to give birth to a baby boy sometime in July.
The 34-year-old Reese, a biological female who identifies as male, explained during an episode of the WNYC podcast the Longest Shortest Time that he and Chaplow have had to take extra precaution during his pregnancy, especially after the couple suffered from a miscarriage six weeks into a pregnancy last year.
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After suffering a miscarriage in 2016, the couple explained that they wanted to wait about a year before they begin trying to conceive again. However, they decided that it would be best if they kept trying.
Since Reese had to stop taking testosterone in order to get pregnant, the couple wanted to avoid health complications associated with restarting and stopping the hormone therapy.
According to the Independent, the couple believed their first pregnancy was their "only" chance at getting pregnant. But after about six months of trying, the couple explained that Reese woke up with a sickness one morning and found out after taking a pregnancy test that he was pregnant.
Due to the prior miscarriage, Reese said that he became obsessed with weighing himself in the early days of the second pregnancy and took multiple pregnancy tests.
Reese was also worried about how he would be treated when it came time for his six-week ultrasound and called ahead to the doctor's office to let them know that he was a pregnant transgender dad.
"I can feel someone looking at my face and searching for the remnants of womanhood," Reese explained in the podcast. "They kind of squint their eyes a little bit and I can tell they're trying to take away my beard, they're trying to de-transition me in their heads."
Reese explained that the fears of discrimination and judgment were unfounded.
"There just hasn't been an ounce of transphobia from anyone I have come in contact with," Reese said. "Every person wouldn't even bat an eye that there was a dude with a beard claiming to be pregnant who is here to get bloodwork done and I have been trans long enough to know that doesn't come magically."
Even though the ultrasounds show that the baby is a male, the running joke in their family is that the baby has been identified as "diagnosis: male."
This is not the first time that Reese and Chaplow have gained notoriety.
As the Daily Mail points out, the couple first gained attention in 2011 when they shared about their journey into "accidental" parenthood after they adopted their niece and nephew when Chaplow's sister and boyfriend were deemed unfit to care for the children.
Reese and Chaplow run a website and a Facebook page, where Reese has discussed how he deals with being a transgender male and being pregnant.
"For me, just transitioning hormonally — taking testosterone so that I have a beard and my voice is the deepest it is ever going to get and appear like a man — that is enough for me. I never wanted to change my body. I never felt like I needed to change my body," Reese explained in a March 28 Facebook video. "I, for sure, do not hate my body. I think my body is awesome and I feel like it is a gift to have been born with the body that I did and I made the necessary changes so that I could keep living in it — both through hormones but also through other body modifications, tattoos, etcetera to reclaim my body and help it be my own.
"I never wished or wanted to be assigned male at birth or to have my body match up exactly like that of my partner, who was assigned male at birth. I love being trans. I think it is kind of awesome actually," Reese continued. "I never wanted my body to be different. If you can understand that, it would not seem so bizarre for me to want to create and carry a baby. I don't wish that my body wasn't a trans body. I'm OK being a man who has a uterus and has the capacity and ability of carrying a baby."
