A transgender man in Oregon claims he is pregnant with a daughter, but when the baby is born, he will play father while his wife plays mother. ( dpa )
In the online version of Advocate.com, Thomas Beatie writes that he was once a woman but kept his reproductive organs when he underwent sex-change hormonal therapy and had his breasts removed some years ago.
"How does it feel to be a pregnant man?" Beatie writes. "Incredible. 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."
A photo posted online shows the naked upper torso of a lightly bearded man holding his hand on his rounded stomach.
When Beatie and wife Nancy married ten years ago, he still had a uterus but his wife did not, due to a hysterectomy for endometriosis, an unusual tissue growth outside and around the uterus.
So when they decided they wanted children, they purchased sperm from a sperm bank and conducted the insemination at home after, Beatie claims, a number of physicians refused to help them.
"I always wanted to have children," Beatie wrote. "Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire."
The couple moved from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest two years ago, along with their custom screen-printing business, identified as "Define Normal" by the Oregon daily, The Oregonian.
That's when they decided to get pregnant. Beatie stopped taking his testosterone therapy, and within four months, says he got his first menstrual cycle in eight years - without any hormones or fertility drugs.
One physician told the Oregonian that the biology sounded "plausible."
"The definition of family has changed a lot," Dr Mark Nichols, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, told the Oregonian.
Beatie said his wife Nancy was happy about the pregnancy.
"To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child," Beatie wrote. "I will be my daughters father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."
But to the outside world, their situation has sparked "legal, political, and social unknowns," Beatie wrote. He said doctors have discriminated against them by refusing to help them with the pregnancy.
"Receptionists have laughed at us," he wrote. "Most of Nancys family doesnt even know Im transgender."
His due date is July 3.
Beatie's account appeared in the online version of Advocate.com, a magazine for alternative gender lifestyles.