The Start of a Family

If there is anything more strange to many people it is when a member of the LGBT+ community decides to have a family. Particularly someone transgender. Being a transgender male in a relationship with another individual that is also AFAB [Assigned Female at Birth] has its perks. We get to decide when we want to start a family on our own terms. Which means we can more accurately predict when we have managed to concieve. It's a perk, but it has its own downfalls at the same time. We have to rely on a donor. Finding a donor is complicated. If you do not go through a clinic you have to do things at home which means either going somewhere to buy a donation or find a website that has listed donors.

Some people will only donate through NI [Natural Insemination]. Being someone that has little to no attraction to cisgender men I find the idea unsettling and an excuse for someone to have unprotected sex with strangers. It makes sense to some, but being a point of discomfort for myself and my partner it rules out a lot of potential donors from some websites. There are a few that cater to LGBT+ individuals as a whole and there is a potential for us to use a closer friend in order to have a more localized donor. We came to the agreement that we will draw up a contract with the other individual having them waive their parental rights, but are open to the idea of them still participating in the child's life on occasion.

There were a lot of talks leading up to this. We decided when we had just started dating that we were both interested in children at some point. Now two years into a relationship and married we have reached a point in which we are ready to begin trying to start our family. The complicated part of this is that I would have to stop hormones in order to be able to become pregnant. Unlike my partner I still have a uterus which makes me the only one in the relationship able to carry a fetus.

The one part that concerns me is not conception or carrying the child. It is the fact of stopping hormones and the great potential of gender dysphoria as a result. I have join a Facebook group devoted to transgender pregnancy and everyone is particularly helpful in that endeavor and happy to answer any questions I might have during this experience. A majority of the answers have been about recommendations for reading materials. There are no transgender related pregnancy books that anyone actually knows or perhaps none have been created thus far by the community. Which is fairly sad as there are so many men that go through this experience as well as so many nonbinary individuals that go through pregnancy that do not have proper representation as birth giving parents.

My husband has decided that they like the term Renny, but there are people that like to be called dad, papa, by their own name, or any other number of names by their children or future child. It is interesting to hear from others in the community, but I have not come up with my own name that I am find with my future child to to call me. We have even agreed that if we can not have our own child that we plan to foster. Either way it is going to be an interesting experience and we have decided on names. My only worry is that my pregnancy specialist has informed me that I can be considered as a higher pregnancy risk due to chronic pain that is debilitating without my medications.