The photo discussed here is on People.com
35 year-old transgender man Thomas Beatie drew applause and jeers for his decision to bear a child for his wife after she underwent a hysterectomy and was unable to have children. Beatie is legally a man after having his breasts removed, taking testosterone and changing his name but has retained his womb and was physically able to have a child. Beatie and his wife Nancy have been married five years and live in Bend, Oregon. They were running a print shop together but had to close their business after all the publicity from his pregnancy. The two chose to go public as they didn’t want to have to hide Thomas’ pregnancy. They explained on Oprah that “love makes a family.”
Beattie has revealed three week old baby Susan Juliette, who was healthy, weighed in at 9 pounds and was born naturally. People has an exclusive photo which we can’t publish here but you can see on their website and in the video below. Beattie’s 46 year-old wife Nancy is breastfeeding the baby after taking hormones and using a breast pump to induce lactation.
On June 29 at 8:55 p.m., Beatie, 34, a former female beauty pageant contestant, made cultural history as perhaps the first legally transgender male to give birth, bringing into the world a 9 lbs., 5 oz. baby girl named Susan Juliette.
“She’s so precious, I just can’t stop staring at her,” Thomas tells PEOPLE in his first interview since he and wife Nancy returned with their bundle from Bend, Oregon’s St. Charles Medical Center. “Just holding her is the best feeling in the world.”
Susan – named after Thomas’s mother and conceived through artificial insemination with donor sperm – arrived after 40 hours of labor, with Nancy at Thomas’s side acting as his coach.
“When Susan finally came out, it was like in slow motion,” says Thomas. “I was full of wonder.” Echoes Nancy: “There were tears of joy.”
Both father and daughter came through the birth in perfect health. “I weigh two pounds less than I did before I got pregnant,” adds Thomas. “And I don’t have a single stretch mark!”
At home, the couple is adjusting to their new nightly schedule: Nancy breastfeeding (by induced lactation, a process using hormones and physical stimulation with a breast pump) and Thomas keeping company while watching TV.
Crows Thomas, “Susan is a miracle! And we’re finally the family we’ve been dreaming of.”
[From People]
Pronouns and personal feelings aside, this is a little baby and a new life in the world. It must have taken so much determination for Thomas and Nancy to have a baby after the resistance they had from doctors and from naysayers. Nancy went through all that trouble to breastfeed and you can tell that these two will be devoted and caring parents. If only every baby came into this world so wanted and loved.
Here are the People photos on Good Morning America:
I guess I’m just old fashioned because I find the whole thing disturbing!
Goodness, look at all the hair on that little girl!
I’m glad she’s healthy and the parents are so happy and over the moon. The only thing I find disturbing is that, although I understand transgender and that legally and emotionally Thomas is a man, the fact is that biologically he is still female, and all this hype over a “pregnant man” is ridiculous. As long as his body contains ovaries, a uterus and vagina, he’s still a woman. When someone with testicles and a penis gives birth, then we’ll have our pregnant man.
Lovely. Can this nice couple and their lovely baby now please retire gracefully and start living their lives in private.
I feel a bit like you, syko, that this story was a con from the get-go – the media in collusion with the couple? – and there’s been quite a bit of borderline distasteful cashing-in going on here. If they want to maintain the goodwill that people feel towards them, I think they need to remove themselves post haste and permanently from the spotlight.
What a precious baby! I’m staying far far away from everything else though…
I’m with you, Geronimo. I didn’t need to know they’ve used hormones to cause lactation. The little girl is healthy and lovely, this would be a great time for them all to retire. I’m glad it worked for them, glad they got their baby, glad they’re happy. But I really don’t want to hear much more about them, and I don’t mean here on CB’s site, just in general. Big sensation, disappointing once you found out what the story really was, happy ending. Enough.
I don’t pay attention to the media hype (Does Celebitchy count as media hype? I hope not!) but I think this is a great story. I’m just glad they have a healthy daughter that they wanted so much. No matter anything else, that’s wonderful!
I can’t speak to if they’ve been overexposed but I hope all non-traditional families can look up to them when facing all the barriers to having children.
I am glad that she is so loved and wanted. I hope that they are great parents and find a way to explain how her father is a “man” and was able to give natural birth to her from his vagina but mommy is not gay without completely screwing her up. Hell, I need therapy after that!
I also really hope that she doesn’t pay later for all of the hormones that have been dumped into her tiny little body. Removing your breasts and taking hormones to grow a beard does not make you a man. However, these two do seem to love one another and that is never a bad thing.
You know I believe to each his or her own, privacy and closed doors and such. But the continual ramming it in the public eye makes it insincere. They are using this as leverage or to prove something maybe? not consciously perhaps, I’m sure they care for the child- but they need to stop the media whoring.
And the lactation hormones plus the hormones pre gestation will, indeed have an effect. Hoepfully nothing dire but this is alarming.
Gay parents nowadays are no big deal. They are everywhere and raise beautiful healthy families. However, this is kind of on a whole different level though. I mean how will they explain to their daughter? But it is their lives and they look happy and have a beautiful baby so I wish them all the best. There are so many different types of families now, I guess this is just another new type
This is not a pregnant man! This is a woman, XX chromosomes, who became pregnant.
When a person born male with XY chromosomes becomes pregnant, that will be news. This is not newsworthy and I don’t understand why the media is reporting on it. There is nothing unusual about a female giving birth.
I abhor this person. If she felt she was a man, then be a man……MEN DON”T GET PREGNANT AND GIVE BIRTH. I am sick of seeing this person. She is a sick individual that has made a mockery of transgendered and homosexual people across our country. I wish the media would ignore this person, because attention is all she wants.
She is a disgrace to all man kind.
Wow, that’s a whole lot of hatred directed at a complete stranger there, cara.
He’s the seahorse of the human race I guess.
9.5 lbs and no stretch marks?? Lucky bastard!
Good news, but still weird. All those hormones are a little like playing with fire.
They went through too many artificial means.
Can someone explain to me what makes their shilling of a baby so much more offensive than all of the celebrity mothers?
I agree with Meredith that their being in the public eye gives hope to other families who face obstacles because they are different.
I think the anger about this birth is more about the phobia and prejudice against transgendered people.
They disgust me!!!
1) that’s not their child, just the woman-man’s child with a unknown guy
2) and the decision that being half woman and half man, it’s disgusting enough, so he/she has a penis and a vagina at the same time? and she/he is so proud of it??
3) and the decision to went public about the whole thing is also disgusting, think about what the little girl needs to deal with when she grows up, poor thing!!!
4) American’s moral is going down, selling so-called “home made sex tape”, then you will be a big star, selling disgusting privacy, and you make a lot of money…
I think its wonderful. Hes legally a man but physically still a woman. It makes no difference. They have a baby they wanted and that will be loved, can you say that much about every air headed teen that gets knocked up?
I know everyone’s gone across every point of how the person in question is or is not a man, but answer me this:
Imagine in hundreds of thousands of years from now, when archaeologists are going through the remains of the primitives (us, right now in 2008), and they find Thomas Beattie’s body and they look at the skeleton to determine if it’s a male or female. Wouldn’t they determine that this person was a female? Therefore, how can one legally become something you are not, even if you feel that way?
I support a person’s right to act like and call themselves whatever they want, but how can you legally change something that you really can not?
It’s all very interesting and I expect a lot of landmark legal cases in our lifetimes that deal with these sort of issues that are popping up these days.
You can’t compare this to celebs and their babies. Celebrities were already famous for something else, then had babies. These 2 are famous FOR having a baby.
Please, lets step back from all the ‘phobia’ remarks. I am tired of everyone who doesn’t agree with this kind of thing being labeled ‘ignorant’ or ‘phobic’. Ignorant implies we don’t understand, and phobic that we’re afraid – and I dare say I’m neither.
I understand, and no part of me is afraid of it. You can be against this sort of thing without it being a knee-jerk response or any kind of religious disagreement. I don’t like it because I don’t believe we should be screwing around with nature like this.
We are going to have to face the moral questions this kind of behavior brings up eventually, and some of us would prefer we start that conversation BEFORE it gets out of control. With technology and biological knowledge expanding at the pace it is, where are we going to stop, and decide that this is ‘far enough’?
What if someone wants to change their race? Would you support that? We’re not far off being able to stimulate genes that can make a white man black – or the other way around. I just don’t relish the idea of living in a world where we can change our biological makeup on a whim. That doesn’t make anyone a bigot – it just makes you wary.
Interesting point, Scott. I agree with you that the idea of playing God is scary to me, it is not a “phobia” of transgendered people. I completely disagree with it and don’t think that it should be an option to legally decide that you are another gender. Do what you want with your organs but you are what you are.
Fertility treatments scare me for a lot of reasons, but as a cancer survivor who received chemo that saved my life, that makes me a hypocrite for saying that you can’t play God. It is all so complicated…
Sick and wrong. This child will be confused beyond words when it is old enough to grasp the entire situation of which is was brought into this world. Don’t attack me….just my personal view of the situation.
I’m amazed at just how rancorous some of these comments are.
1. That IS their child, just as an adopted child is its adopted parents’ child. Biology isn’t what makes a family.
2. A person cannot change who they are. Unfortunately, some don’t understand that the physical change is made to reflect what’s on the inside, rather than the other way around.
3. Thomas was a beautiful woman. She could have had a very happy life as one. BUT, something inside of her wasn’t complete, wasn’t right, and she knew it. Her change into Thomas was due to that missing part of her, and while some may view it as drastic, it is no more drastic than the actions of women who feel the need to alter their physical appearance to fill a bra, erase some laugh lines, or remove stretch marks.
4. If the child is raised in a loving home, with supportive and caring parents, the situation it will have been brought it won’t matter. Children grow up in picture perfect homes and end up killing their classmates, and yet that is still the ideal people seem to think brook no problems.
She (and she is a woman)has milked this dry. Go away and raise your child. That child has enough to deal with and they will need their anonymity. All those hormones are going to affect her.
What next? inseminating animals and going on Oprah to boast about it then cashing in with magazine deals showing off part human part animal babies. Will you all say that it is OK as long as the baby is loved?
Daisyfly,
How long have you been a post-op transexual?
Um…ehhh?
They sure seem like some vain people with money to burn. Where are the medical ethics? Thomas has tried to get pregnant like two times before and miscarried, you would think that they’d just get a surrogate who wouldn’t have to take hormones etc. and who’d have a better chance of not miscarrying. Then to top it off, the woman is taking hormones just so that she herself can breast feed the baby?!?! At this point the benefits of breastfeeding seem kinda voided. They seem more interested in the parenthood experience than in the physical well being of the baby.
I feel bad for the kid with her unusual parents. She got an extra serving of Jerry Springer in her family.
this comment is to JO JO….. Yes I am angry about this, she has been portrayed in the press as a hero, something so wonderful. I am angry because if she wanted to have a child then she obviously doesn’t feel like she was a man trapped in a womens body, she had other motives with attention being number 1. I am also angry because there truly are people in this world who have been born into the wrong body and the struggles in which they must live in and with everyday are very real.( there’s agreat doc on transgendered in Iran ) I just do not think this woman has been just in her actions and no one is saying anything because everyone has to be so damn PC.
Hazy, I didn’t know I was one. You’re one of those people, right? The type that think that just because someone supports/defends someone, that means they are that person? Falling in line, eh?
A lot of adults have children for extremely selfish reasons (I want someone to love me, I want to be like everybody else, I’m bored with my relationship, I want a boy, I want a girl, I want this, I want that).
They don’t think about the child. A child who’s not going to grow up in a vacuum but in society, in a world that is complicated enough as it is without being a freak of nature due to his or her parents selfishness. Poor thing, I hope they set up a trust fund for her right now for all the years of therapy and also probably medical care she’s going to need(seing how confused her parents seem to be about their respective genders).
I liked what Trillon said – he/she is the seahorse of humans! That was cute. Total seahorse! I’ll write more later, I’m on the blackberry again, takes too long to write with this tiny phone. But I just love that, s/he’s the seahorse! Cute –
I agree with Dubdub2000. They did not at all think about the child. Just because you can get pregnant does not mean you should have kids. There are 8-year-old girls that have the ability to reproduce, who I would like to assume would not choose to have children. Also what about drug addicts and pedophiles? I also agree with Scott F.: they are screwing around with mother nature way to much. It is almost like they are doing so sort of whacked out experiment, which is sick considering this is an infant’s life.
WOW!!! Celebitchy posters are an intolerant group!!Thought you’d all be happy…..they are breeders now-yea!!!
i’m so disgusted by these two people.
I find this story amazing.I am not especially for or against what they did. This is just one case on earth. Maybe there are more that we don’t know about, but I doubt there are much. As some pointed out, what is the difference with some people having there body completelly transformed like Mickael Jackson or Jocelyn Wilderstein ? They almost don’t look human anymore.
I am much more shocked by seemingly normal people that lock there kids in the basement and rape one for years (that Austrian guy) or people with violent or disturbing sexual practices.
” hormones etc. and who’d have a better chance of not miscarrying. Then to top it off, the woman is taking hormones just so that she herself can breast feed the baby?!?! At this point the benefits of breastfeeding seem kinda voided. ”
I don’t often say this because I like to be respectful of everyones opinions, but on this count, you’re just wrong. She’ll need hormones
to start lactation, not to continue it. There will be no better start for that baby than nutrition that is designed specifically to it and it’s changing needs.
I’m shocked by how hateful some of the other comments are. Just because the act of surgically altering gender isn’t natural, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. Have there been any studies showing that transgendered people have a negative impact on society? I can’t help but feel that it’s much more beneficial to have that very small percentage of the population happy in their skin than full of self-loathing and living a life that they don’t want.
They should have adopted a baby. This is disgusting.
I agree with B Lo and Cara… this whole thing is selfish and disgusting. It’s turned into a spectacle. Going on Oprah and posing for People magazine is pathetic…
I think this should not have been publicized. It’s bad enough they have to explain this to their child but to us who have 9 years olds and they ask about it, it is very unfair.
If you wanted to be a man, be a man, it is wrong to keep your female parts but legally be changed to a man. You are not a man if you want to be able to carry a child.
I wish these people would think about other people. My son came home and was asking all of these questions. I just got done with explaining about the two mommies one of the girls in his class has. Now I had to explain how daddies cant really have babies because… and I wasnt really sure how to break that down.
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