A transgender man has given birth to a healthy baby five years after having his first child when he was a woman and is raising the child as gender neutral.
Kaci Sullivan has become the first person to give birth while living as both genders.
The 30-year-old began his transition from female to male four years ago – and this year, conceived with his partner Steven.
After a seven-day labour resulting in a C-section, the couple welcomed baby Phoenix, weighing a healthy 8lb 9oz.
The couple have chosen not to reveal their baby’s sex and said the child will be raised as ‘gender neutral’ until being old enough to decide its sexuality.
Kaci documented the pregnancy on YouTube channel My Trans Pregnancy:
Kaci is also a parent to five-year-old Grayson, who he shares with his ex-husband, having given birth while living as a woman.
Despite being the victim of online abuse and having to deal with being stared at in public with a bump, Kaci made the decision to speak out to ‘break the stigma around trans parenthood’.
He said:
The moment the baby came out and I got to hear them cry was indescribable. It’s incredible to think that I had made this little human.
After 26 weeks of morning sickness and seven days in labour it was such a beautiful moment. We are just so happy and grateful and enjoying spending time together as a family. The baby is delightful, loving and sweet.
The connection I’ve felt to them throughout my pregnancy has been an incredible privilege and the last nine months have brought my partner and I so close together.
Kaci said he wasn’t threatened by the idea of pregnancy and he didn’t feel any less masculine.
Adding:
Some people have been perturbed by the idea of me giving birth but I don’t engage or respond to them. If I see those comments I just get rid of them.
They will try and find our safe space and violate it with their opinions, but they are jerks. I don’t waste my time or energy by giving them anything in return.
Because I don’t see pregnancy as inherently feminine, and because I don’t subscribe to make-believe gender roles, I wasn’t threatened by the idea of pregnancy.
It didn’t make me feel any less masculine.
Kaci, who runs the TransLiberation Art Coalition, promoting activism in art, was assigned the female gender at birth but said he had always struggled with his identity – a problem made worse as he suffered abuse which began when he was just four-years-old.
He met his first husband aged 19, but said by his early twenties he was battling ‘severe depression’ and began ‘drinking excessively’.
Kaci fell pregnant with his first child in July 2011 and hoped becoming a mother would make him feel more feminine – but was left in a dark place when it didn’t.
He said:
Throughout the experience, I prayed to connect with womanhood, to identify with what was happening to my body, but I couldn’t.
I felt so hopeless and lost. I wanted to die. I fell into such a dark place and I was terrified to bring a baby into that darkness with me.
But the moment they put him in my arms it was bliss. Immediately I loved him like I had never loved anything or anyone and I felt such a surge of duty to him.
Three months after giving birth to Grayson, Kaci came out as transgender and says he ‘felt like a tonne of bricks had been lifted’.
Unfortunately, his marriage broke down, friends ditched him and he was forced to leave his admin job, but despite all that, he says he felt ‘totally liberated’.
Then in 2013, aged 25, Kaci began transitioning by taking male hormone testosterone and undergoing a double mastectomy.
A year later he met Steven on an internet dating site and said they ‘hit it off straight away’.
A false pregnancy scare led to the couple deciding to try for a baby in 2016 after Kaci stopped taking male hormones for health reasons.
Six months later Kaci conceived naturally and went on to enjoy a healthy pregnancy.
Kaci, who says his baby will refer to him as ‘dad’, refuses to answer the question: ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ because he says it’s ‘irrelevant’.
Adding:
I wish people realised that they’re not asking me about the baby’s gender identity.
There is no way anyone could know that. They’re asking me what my baby’s genitals look like. This is a creepy question when we break it down.
We don’t need to be sexualising little children. Nobody but your child should be revealing their gender.
Our sex and gender identity have nothing to do with socially constructed gender roles. These are three entirely separate concepts.
The architecture of your brain does not change depending on what colour you are dressed in as a baby.
Congratulations to the lovely family.
