Mar 7, 2012

The man who has given birth three times, the Beaties look like any normal

 Father Thomas
Like all three-year-olds, Susan Beatie is fascinated by animals. She wants to be a vet — maybe even a vet and a princess — when she grows up. 
At bedtime, she loves to climb onto her father’s knee and demand a story about a hungry caterpillar, a greedy bee or a snail sailing away on the tail of a whale. 
But the book she loves most is Mister Seahorse, which explains how male seahorses become ‘pregnant’. 
A quirky choice for a child, you might think, but entirely understandable given that this story has been used to explain to Susan the inexplicable: how she came to be. 
‘It’s her favourite bedtime story,’ says her father Thomas, 38. ‘I tell her that’s what I did: I carried her in my tummy like Mr Seahorse, and she gets it. 
‘She doesn’t think there is anything weird about it. There is a photograph of me pregnant, and she points to it all the time, saying: “Daddy, Daddy, I’m inside and I got bigger and bigger, and then I had to come out.” ’
It may sound like a particularly strange sort of fairy tale, but the story Thomas has told his daughter about her arrival in this world is true. The slightly-built martial arts instructor made history as the first ‘man’ in the world to give birth.
Of course, as Susan will doubtless discover one day, there was nothing natural about it. Male seahorses are genetically able to carry embryos: Thomas’s pregnancy was possible only because he was born female.
He was in his 20s when he underwent a sex change and became a man. He never took the final step of having a hysterectomy.
He kept his female reproductive organs because one day he wanted to be able to give birth. And now he has — not just once, but three times. Susan has two little brothers: Austin, who was born just a year after her; and Jensen, born 13 months after that. 

Nancy and Thomas, with their children Susan, Austin and Jensen
Thomas and his son Jensen share a private moment shortly after his birth
Despite giving birth to them, Thomas is known as Dad, while his wife Nancy is known as Mum. All three children were born from Thomas’s eggs. Their biological father is the same anonymous sperm donor. It’s confusing to a sophisticated adult mind, let alone a child’s.
Thomas is not the only man to have given birth. It is believed there are at least five male mothers around the world. Last month, a British man who was born a woman — he is not prepared to go public with his identity — confirmed he had given birth to a baby girl.

On the surface of it, everything seems normal at the Beatie home in Phoenix, Arizona. The family live in a sizeable house on a sprawling estate of near-identical homes, each with a manicured lawn, a tidy driveway and neat fence. 
But, inside, things are less peaceful. There is a playroom beside the kitchen, but toys are strewn all over the house. There is a doll’s house in the hall and soft toys everywhere. You can’t go far without encountering a Hello Kitty toy or a Hot Wheels car. 
All three children have baby dolls, which, their father explains, they like to push around in shopping trolleys or ferry on board their tricycles. 
On the surface, Thomas is like any other proud parent. But it is difficult to disentangle the ordinary from the extraordinary in this household. 
He chats happily about his brood. ‘Susan is a mini-me,’ he says. ‘A lot of people think Austin is a girl, because of his long hair, I guess, but that doesn’t bother us.’
It seems to be a happy home, with Thomas and his wife Nancy, 49, coming across as ordinary, harassed parents, desperately juggling work and family life.
At one point, Thomas is brushing Susan’s hair with one hand, while pouring cereal with the other. His wife is changing the nappy of their youngest child on the sofa.
So far, so normal. But then we move on to the delicate subject of the couple’s sex life. Both laugh as Thomas explains: ‘There are physical issues there obviously, but they aren’t the things that get in the way. The biggest problem is that we have three small children. Our challenge is actually getting the bed to ourselves!’


Pregnant Thomas with his daughter Susan, on March 16, 2009,








 

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