Well.... This Makes More Sense Now...

I was just a little boy.... until
I wasn't.

 Puberty was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me.  Before that, I was free to be who I wanted to be and navigated in a world that was just little humans.  Sure, we played at being male or female, but for the most part, I was accepted as one of the guys.  Most of my friends were guys.... I played on a girl's soccer team, but we could play with boys and were physically still even... I raced with boys on the playground, and sat with them at their lunch tables.  And then 7th grade happened.  Girls got boobs, and periods.... and boys got deeper voices and bigger egos.  This is when my whole life changed.

Puberty is confusing for most...
I just got a bonus.

I wasn't accepted as one of the guys anymore.  I wasn't invited to watch baseball games, and athletic boys started to get muscles, and I started to feel more and more self conscious.  I was so embarrassed when I started my period for the first time, I didn't tell anyone.  I threw the underpants of shame into the back of my closet, and pretended it was all a nightmare and ignored it as long as I could.  My body changed, it was harder and harder to pass as male, and I generally just felt crummy.  I tried to fit into a girl body.  I bought tighter sweaters, and felt like garbage.  I tried to wear a tie on a field trip where we had to dress up, and the school didn't allow me to go.  It was all very confusing.  One day I had a great handle on who I was, and who my friends were, and an influx of hormones later, I was more confused than I ever had been.

Oh god...  A book fair raccoon
poster, and a tight shirt.  I am
not sure there is a more
embarrassing photo of me!

Now, no ones likes a period (unless you are hoping to not be pregnant, in an instance where you weren't as careful as possible) but I really despised them.  I reiterate that I never planned on being pregnant, so a period to me was just a monthly reminder that I was "yep, still female."  There seemed to be no purpose to it... the scarlet letter of womanhood that I could no more escape than ignore.  But every month... like clockwork, there it was.

I use to believe that everything happens for a reason.  But after a long road to getting pregnant, nearly bankrupting ourselves in the process, falling into a depression because of it and losing our first pregnancy, I can no longer say that I believe that.  I do believe, now that the dust has settled, I can find reason in the things that have happened...

This body makes sense now... it has a purpose, and a function.  For that I am sincerely grateful.  I have spent the last 18 years feeling like I was stuck in a prison...  It feels less like a prison now.  This journey through pregnancy (and now to the beyond of parenthood) has given me back something that I had lost in puberty... and that was the ability to choose who I was going to be. 

Through this process I have learned to use my voice like I have never before.  I think this was the most empowering thing about our birth experience.  I was able to use my voice, because for the first time in my life, I feel as if people were really listening.  When I said I wanted to use the pronoun "he", people tried their best to do that.... when I came into L & D with a well manicured goatee, no one batted an eye.  I was given the confidence to be perfectly, and comfortably me.  Now it is my responsibility to take that confidence out into the world and continue to allow myself to live openly and honestly.

 It seems ironic that to find my truest gender identity, I had to go through something that is seen to be at one very far end of the gender spectrum.  But when it comes down to it...  having a baby has little (or nothing really) to do with gender, and everything to do with biological sex.  If you have functioning reproductive organs, you can have a baby.  When we first started talking about me carrying our child, I remember thinking of many wonderful men I knew who would have gladly carried a baby for their family (my father-in-law being chief amongst them).  I am one lucky guy to have gone through this...  and many women I have talked to with cis-gendered husbands have remarked how they wish they could have shared the load.  Like any person who desperately wanted a child, I would have sacrificed anything to make it happen, and luckily for me it doesn't matter if I wear pants, dresses, sarongs, lederhosen, dashikis or anything else.  So, this body no longer feels like a prison... it feels the opportunity we needed to help our family grow.