Nursing in Public

I haven't written in a while because the whole family has been sick with colds and nasty things. The illnesses have been pretty awful, but they did provide interesting opportunities to breastfeed publicly while waiting around in doctor's offices!

Today I fed Jacob immediately before leaving home for the walk-in clinic down the street, but after forty-five minutes of waiting perfectly quietly, he started to get antsy. I struck up a conversation with the woman sitting across from me, distracting him and biding myself some time. She mentioned that she has twin baby boys, seven months old. We compared notes for a while, and she said she breastfed them until six months and then gave up out of sheer exhaustion. I applauded her effort, congratulating her on breastfeeding through a very important period in her sons' lives.

Then she mentioned that she always pumped for them. I commiserated, "Oh, that is difficult. Were they born premature?"

"No, they got to full term. 37 weeks to the day."

"That's fantastic! Great job." But I was still wondering. "Did they have trouble latching then?"

"No, I never tried. It's the same way I did it with the first one. I just pumped. That way somebody else can do the feedings too. It takes so much time to pump though."

Bizarre! She thought it was easier to pump than to breastfeed, so that somebody else could feed them too? What about getting up to do the pumping, getting up to feed the babies, cleaning the pumping equipment, cleaning the bottles? And to miss the closeness of a breastfeeding relationship! I guess she never considered doing some feeding at the breast and then pumping some so that her husband could feed the boys. I am so sorry for this woman - I don't think she knows what she missed.

Anyway, soon enough Jacob just had to eat, so I fed him. Right there. About two feet away from old ladies, and young ladies, and scruffy men, and big fat men, and the receptionists. And they mostly frowned and looked away. The ones who had been smiling at Jacob before didn't smile at him anymore once we were done nursing. But none of them dared say anything. I love it. If anyone questioned what I was doing, I planned to ask if they would prefer for him to cry, for the pleasure of the whole waiting room. One way or another, we will assault your senses, either visual or auditory. It is much easier to look the other way than to shut off your ears. I suppose they figured as much.

A friendly new woman came in, who hadn't seen me breastfeeding. She asked how old he was. I told her, and she mentioned she has a six month old. I told her we had a trip coming up and I was wondering how to make it go smoothly for my little boo.

"Oh, make sure you get onto the plane with him on an empty stomach because he'll need to drink a whole bottle on the way up and a whole one on the way down to help his ears adjust to the pressure changes."

"He's still breastfed. We'll make sure he eats."

"Wow, really? Still breastfed? Mined weaned herself at four months."

How does a baby wean herself at four months? Did she really decide to commit suicide? Stop eating her available liquid food before she would be able to chew and swallow even rather soft solid foods? I can't imagine an infant so young having a death wish like that. I know that somehow there was a communication failure, but I'm sure that this baby didn't want to wean herself.

When I got in to see the doctor, he tried very hard to be respectful. "Well, hello Dad! How are you today?" He looked at the chart. "I mean, Mom!! How are you?"

"No, it's Dad," I said.

"But why does your chart have an F on it?"

Here we go again, I thought. "Because I'm transgendered. I was born female, transitioned to male by taking hormones. I identify as male. But my birth province won't change my ID unless I get a complete ovariohysterectomy. It sucks."

"Well, would you like me to change it in your file here?"

I thought about this for a minute. It was a kind offer.

"No, probably better not, because my government health card still says F. It would mess up your system and they'd likely decide I'm not insured or something."

He nodded sympathetically. "So, what's up?" And we got down to business.

The First Pregnant Man

I just finished reading Thomas Beatie's Labour of Love: The Story of One Man's Extraordinary Pregnancy. I read most of it overnight because my poor little guy was nursing constantly due to a cold. The book is not terribly well-written but I was curious to hear about the social and media aspects of his pregnancy. The main question I've come away with is this: why did Beatie and his wife have such a rough time while my family has been met almost entirely with understanding and generosity?

Beatie with his wife and child: a happy family.

One possible answer is that Beatie was a trail blazer for us. Although I'm sure other trans guys have gone through pregnancy and birth before, Beatie was the first to go public with it. He appeared on Oprah at around the same time that I announced my own intention to transition to my family, friends and colleagues. Maybe everyone we've come into contact with had already heard of Beatie and so felt a little more comfortable with the idea of a pregnant transgender guy. Possibly, but I doubt that this explains all of it.

Beatie lives in a small town and we live in a small city. This might help us I suppose. Is Canada just far more tolerant than the US in general? Do our health care providers get better LGBT training? For one thing, we didn't require any medical assistance to get pregnant while Beatie did. But still, my family doctor's reaction to our pregnancy was simple: "well, it's very natural to want to have a family. Make sure you take folic acid. See you later alligator." Our midwives prioritized us because they thought the continuity of care they could provide would be helpful.

Beatie says in his book that he went public with his story because it would have been impossible for a guy to hide a pregnancy. Well, we did. Kind of. Friends and family and colleagues knew because we told them. Our neighbours didn't have a clue until we introduced them to our two week old baby. I don't think strangers ever really gave me a second glance. Or if they did they were too polite to ever say anything. I wore somewhat baggy sweaters and that took care of things.

I was deeply saddened to read about how Beatie was denied medical care on numerous occasions, laughed at by nurses, and rejected by members of his family and community. I don't know why exactly my family has been so lucky but I am incredibly grateful for the sheer joy expressed by our baby's grandparents, the squeals of delight offered by our next door neighbours when they finally found out, the oodles of gifts flung at us from friends and even casual acquaintances, and of course the thousands of ounces of breast milk donated to our baby by close to twenty generous women. Happy New Year everyone.

A Gay Man's Guide to Breastfeeding: If I Can Do It, So Can You!

Note: This is about as far from medical advice as you can get.

Step One: Plan a home birth. If this is not possible for you, choose a nearby field preferably with tall, sweet-smelling grass. If you are more woodsy-minded, a small stand of trees will also do nicely.


Step Two: Gawk at people who are breastfeeding successfully. DO NOT politely avert your eyes at the sight of a bare human nipple, but instead, stare at it. Observe how the baby latches on.

Step Three: Birth on your own time, with privacy. Ask someone who has breastfed a child for at least one year to be on-call and ready to help you within an hour of the birth. DO call this person if you experience any difficulty latching your baby, or even if you are just not quite sure!

Step Four: Immediately after the birth, DO stay with your baby. DO NOT weigh or bathe your baby. BREASTFEED your baby.

Step Five: Breastfeed.

Step Six: Breastfeed.

Step Seven: Breastfeed.

Step Eight: Breastfeed.

Step Nine: Breastfeed.

Step Ten: If after all this breastfeeding, you still don't have enough milk, get some donated breast milk from a friend or through Human Milk 4 Human Babies.

Step Eleven: Keep breastfeeding. Use a supplemental nursing system if you need to.

He's Local

Sometimes I am pretty cavalier about my unusual family situation. I can find myself telling some stranger on the street, "oh, no, my partner is a man, my husband. I don't have a wife. I'm actually transgender. I birthed my baby myself, and I can even breastfeed him some. Great, isn't it?"

If I have plenty of time, and I feel safe, I'm pretty willing to explain what we've done. Most people respond very well, with mild curiosity or amusement. Sometimes though, it just isn't the right moment to get into explanations about how transgender folks give birth. One evening Jacob had just fallen asleep in a coffee shop and we needed to get going when somebody asked us if we used a surrogate. Neither Ian nor I like to lie about anything, so we kind of mumbled something confusing yet agreeable and walked away. "Ah, yes, isn't it wonderful that people can do that nowadays? Well, we have to go!"

On another occasion we were eating at our favourite restaurant in Winnipeg, a small, family-run Ethiopian joint downtown. We had our wedding dinner there, and we love the friendly staff. However, communication is a considerable challenge due to the language barrier. I thought I'd booked the dinner only to find out a week before our wedding that the restaurant had no record of the event. Luckily, they hadn't booked anything else either, so I simply booked again, this time in person. The actual day went well except for that there had been a misunderstanding over the number of guests, and there weren't enough chairs for everyone. Then the restaurant Momma forgot to include samosas on our bill and we didn't notice either. Weeks later, she mentioned it to us while her son pleaded with her to forget about it. We apologized and paid for what we'd had.

So, after all this, Ian and I both instinctively felt that there was no way we could successfully explain the origin of our child, even though I'm sure the well-meaning restaurant owner would have been delighted to hear all about it. She cooed over Jacob for a good five minutes. Then she asked, "So, you get him in Canada, then? Or international?"

She was assuming that Jacob was adopted. Ian responded quickly, saying, "yes, he is a local Winnipeg boy!"

The restaurant Momma approved heartily. "Very good, very good," she said. "Have a good night! See you again soon!"

I vowed that the next time I saw her son with his much better grasp of English, I'd explain everything to him and ask him to tell his mother in their language.

"Good Thing He Takes Formula!"

My baby, Jacob, has been completely breastfed since his birth seven months ago. He is beginning to eat a few solid foods now, but he has never tasted formula. To make this happen, my partner Ian and I spent (and continue to spend) countless hours tracking down donors, driving all over town picking up milk, and meeting breast milk shipments at the Greyhound bus depot. We do this because we want the best for our little guy. So far, Jacob has had my milk as well as the breast milk of sixteen extremely generous women.

We often meet people who don't value breast milk anything the way that we do. Yesterday, for example, we ran into somebody I'd met a few months before at a local play group. In the course of normal chit-chat, she happened to ask me something or other about bottle feeding Jacob at night. I gave her a quizzical look and said that our baby was entirely breastfed. Then I realized that perhaps I'd never told her that I was transgendered. I know that my personal history is fascinating and highly memorable to most people, but it is also my normal life that I live every day. I don't always bother to mention it, and sometimes I just can't recall if I've come out to someone in particular or not. I quickly explained myself to this woman using my usual spiel. "I was born female, transitioned by taking hormones... I make some milk myself... we use a supplemental nursing system, know what that is?"

She caught herself up remarkably quickly, hardly missing a beat. She said we should get together some time soon, and I agreed. But then she said the unthinkable. "Yeah, my guy gets mostly the breast. Luckily he takes formula though, so his Dad can feed him too. I mean, I could pump my milk but I don't want to feel like a COW! My first would never take formula. Ugh, that was difficult. Sure glad this one does."

Cow's milk is designed for baby cows; human milk is for baby humans.

I responded, "Well, I guess it tastes different, doesn't it?"

"Oh yes, formula tastes pretty gross while breast milk is so sweet."

I tried not to let my jaw clank too loudly when it dropped all the way down onto my chest. If only this woman had any idea the way that we search, scrounge, and beg for breast milk for our baby. She could just pump some out if she wanted her boy to have breast milk when she's gone, but formula is easier, so she doesn't.

Hospital Visit

Last night, after two hours of inconsolable crying, we took our little guy over to the hospital. By that point I was crying too. I was scared for my baby boy's health but I was also scared to be a transgendered parent going into a hospital.

The night before, Jacob's temperature spiked to just over 103 degrees. Still, he seemed to be managing ok with it. In the middle of the night he threw up all over our family bed, and then he smiled at us.We didn't mind as long as he wasn't too miserable. By morning his fever was way down. He was quiet but not unhappy. We had a lazy at-home, in-bed kind of day.

At 8pm, Jacob woke up screaming from his nap. I tried to breastfeed him, I bounced him, I walked him up and down the stairs, I walked him in circles around the house, I took him to see the dog, I let him have a whiff of the crisp November air, all to no avail. He cried all out as hard as he could for about a minute, and then would pause, sobbing those huge, full body sobs, for thirty seconds, and then would cry all out again for a minute, and so on.

Finally Ian walked in the door, home from work. I told him how things had been, we deliberated for a few minutes and decided to head to the hospital. Our little guy was in pain. There was something seriously wrong.

I could hear their questions already in my head. So who is the mother? How much formula has he taken today? You don't give him formula? Well, where do you get this donated breast milk? I imagined explaining first to the intake nurse, then to the doctor, then to the next doctor when the shift changed, then to some other nurses, then to another doctor all about how I was transgendered, I'd birthed Jacob myself, and was breastfeeding him using a supplemental nursing system and donated milk from generous women we'd met online.

The hospital we were headed for, only two blocks away, is notorious in our city for being breastfeeding unfriendly. Women and their newborns regularly leave with soothers, bottles and formula in hand after receiving muddled or no advice on breastfeeding. How were they going to cope with a breastfeeding man using donated milk?

Health care providers are supposed to be trained to cope with queer individuals and families. They should know the basics of what it means to be transgendered or gay, and they should at least get their pronouns straight, so to speak. (If you don't know what "transgendered" means, click here to see how I define it for myself) One doctor I encountered confirmed that yes, he knew what a transsexual is, no need to explain. I went on to tell him about my health problem only to realize that he had no idea what it meant to be transgendered. He had my anatomy, well, if not inside out, then certainly backwards. From that day forth, I vowed to always explain myself from the beginning, whether or not the health care professional in question claims to know what I'm all about. "I am transgendered. This means that I was born female, but transitioned to male. I did this by taking hormones..."

As we walked over to the hospital with our seven month old baby, I wondered what kind of conversations this evening would bring. I held him close to my skin underneath my coat. And, as we walked over to the hospital, our baby magically stopped crying. By the time we got to emergency, he was looking all around him and smiling coyly at the intake nurses. They took his temperature and found it to be perfectly normal. We walked around the hospital for about forty-five minutes and then went home with our baby who was fussing over having to be bundled up in the cold. He wanted a better view of where we were off to and his toque and my jacket were getting in the way. But at least we'd finally had the good sense to get out of the house and do something social for a few minutes...

Lesbian parents get an A+

Recent research shows kids of lesbian moms are flourishing.

Now, when will they do a study on us fantastic transgendered birthing parents?!