It''s the story that has the media buzzing and people talking. Thomas and his wife,
Nancy, are a happily married couple who run a small business, live in a normal neighborhood and are expecting their first child.
So why are they making headlines around the world? The husband, Thomas, is the one who''s pregnant.
Thomas was born female and lived for 24 years as a woman named Tracy.
Growing up in Hawaii, Tracy and her two brothers experienced loss at an early age. When she was just 12 years old, her
mother committed suicide. "My father had to learn to be a father because he wasn''t around a whole lot," Thomas
says. "He worked a lot. He let my mother raise us, and she was an excellent mother."
Though Thomas says he doesn''t feel he was born in the wrong body, he does remember being a tomboy. "I liked to play with LEGOs and go fishing," he says.
A few years later, Tracy hit puberty and
began to realize something was different. "I started to grow breasts, and it was kind of a shock to me because I didn''t have my mother around," Thomas says. "I was just used to catching footballs and balls, and so it hurt. I just kind of thought, ''What''s my body going through? Is it betraying me?''"
Unprecedented Pregnancy 3 of 12 As Tracy got older, her father began encouraging her to model. Tracy even entered a pageant and was named a Miss Hawaii Teen USA finalist.
As a teenager, she began dating men. "I
felt like I was pushed into it. I felt like that''s what I had to do in society," Thomas says. "It was just a convenience, I guess."
At age 17, Tracy entered into a relationship with her martial arts instructor. "I was with him for three years, and he trained me to be a good martial artist," Thomas says. "He complimented me, saying that I fought like a
man. That was the best compliment he could give."
During her college years, Tracy began to discover her true
gender identity. "That''s when I found myself," Thomas says. "It was a process of self-discovery for me, and I ended up having my first girlfriend. We were together for three and a half years."
As she entered her 20s, the gender that Tracy gravitated toward was male. "When I woke up in the morning, I felt like a man," Thomas says. "It was difficult for society to respect me the way I felt on the inside if my outside didn''t match it."
Eventually, Tracy stopped wearing women''s clothing and began dressing in men''s clothes. "I''m a masculine person, and I preferred wearing clothes that made me feel comfortable," Thomas says. "It wasn''t something that I analyzed. I woke up in the morning and decided, ''This is what I want to wear today.'' Over time, people started calling me ''sir,'' and that was an interesting concept to me."
After researching what it meant to be transgender, Tracy broached the subject with her first girlfriend. "She wasn''t very supportive of the idea," Thomas says. "I was discussing having a surgical procedure of removing my breasts, and she just said, ''Why can''t you just be a lesbian?''"
When that relationship ended, Tracy took the first step toward becoming a transgender male. Tracy sought the help of a physician and began taking testosterone.
Since the beginning of their relationship, Thomas says Nancy supported his gender transition. "She was fantastic about it," he says.
Over the years, testosterone injections helped Thomas look and sound more masculine. His voice dropped a few octaves, and he began growing facial hair. These hormone treatments also altered his sexual organs. Thomas says his clitoris grew to the size of a small penis. "It looks like a penis," he says. "I can have intercourse with my wife."
In 2002, Thomas opted to have his breasts surgically removed and legally became a man, but he made the conscious decision to keep his female reproductive organs. "I wanted to have a child one day," he says. "I didn''t know how. It was just a dream."
Thomas says the desire to have children doesn''t make him feel like less of a man. "I have a very stable male gender identity. I see pregnancy as a process, and it doesn''t define who I am. It''s not a male or female desire to want to have a child…it''s a human desire," he says. "I''m a person, and I have the right to have my own biological child."
Once Thomas was legally considered a man in the state of Oregon, he and Nancy said "I do." After a few years of marriage, they decided to start a family.
Nancy, the mother of two grown daughters from a previous marriage, says the effects of endometriosis left her unable to have more children. "
removed my womb," she says. After investigating their options, the couple decided to use anonymous donor sperm.
First, they had to find a physician who would agree to treat Thomas. "We''ve had a really hard time finding doctors to treat us and to help us get pregnant," he says. "We got rejected by our first doctor because he said that his staff felt uncomfortable working with someone like me."
Published: April 06, 2008
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