'Pregnant' man stuns medical profession

A man who used to be a woman is five months pregnant, according to an article he has written for a national magazine that features a picture of him at 22 weeks, with facial hair and a man's flat chest above a swollen belly.

The case of Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman and describes himself as a "transgender male", has triggered discussion among ethicists and family groups with one expert describing the development as "playing with fire".

In a first person piece entitled Labour of Love and published in the most recent issue of The Advocate, a magazine with a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readership, Mr Beatie says his decision to have a child "has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals".

Even his own family members questioned him.

According to his article, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.

Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, Nancy, in Bend, Oregon.

The couple, who have been together 10 years, wanted to have children.

Mrs Beatie, however, was unable to conceive, having suffered severe endometriosis and undergone a hysterectomy, her husband writes.

So they decided Mr Beatie should try to carry a baby. He stopped his bimonthly hormone injections and had his first period in eight years, he writes.

After a year - and nine doctors - he was able to get pregnant using frozen donor sperm but the pregnancy was ectopic and required surgery.

A second pregnancy, however, was successful and the couple's daughter is due on July 3, the article states.

Mr Beatie describes the process as a challenge, listing the reactions they received to a situation that "sparks legal, political and social unknowns".

The first doctor they approached "told me to shave my facial hair", Mr Beatie writes. Others turned them away or referred them to a psychologist.

"Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy's family doesn't even know I'm transgender".

"How does it feel to be a pregnant man?" Mr Beatie writes in the article. "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.

"In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child.

"I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

Media in Hawaii reported that before Mr Beatie became a man, he was a woman called Tracy Langondino.