His wife, Nancy, had previously undergone a hysterectomy, due to severe endometriosis, so when the couple decided they were ready to become parents, Beatie — a transgender who’d made the female-to-male transition in 2003 — stopped taking his testosterone injections. After suffering an ectopic pregnancy with triplets, Beatie conceived again. This time, the pregnancy was viable: The couple’s first child was born on June 29, 2008. He’s since given birth to two more children.
To Beatie, the experience was nothing short of transformative. “How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” he wrote in a 2008 essay in The Advocate, a magazine geared toward the gay community. “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.”
However, pregnancy wasn’t an entirely positive experience for Beatie, primarily because of the reactions of health-care providers to his nontraditional route to fatherhood. One doctor told Beatie that he had to shave his facial hair, and after consulting with his hospital’s ethics board, decided he wouldn’t treat Beatie, period — after the couple had shelled out thousands of dollars for checkups.
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