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.

An Awkward Place for a Awkward Question

So, like any new family, there are a great many things that we need to have for a new baby that we didn't know that we needed.  My Mom recently asked us if the people in the baby section at Target knew us by name yet... and the answer is probably. 

Amy carries babe in the Moby

We are getting used to strangers oogling at our cute little one.  I mean... lets face it, babies are cute, and ours is certainly no exception.  It has been interesting, because I am not used to being approached in public.  Amy usually wears Hayden in the Moby wrap, and many people ask us what she has in there, and want to see the cherub like face of our newborn.  We are proud parents and are happy to oblige.  A considerable amount of people who want to see Hayden's little face are old... and it seems like their likelihood to just assume I am the father of the baby is directly proportional to their age.  Old people, people in the deep south, foreign people and children are the most likely to assume I am male.  I think this is because they have a more black and white view of gender, and therefore the shade of grey where I live is mistaken for the more masculine of the two (because I perform male, I am assumed male.)

On a recent trip to a big baby box store, for cloth diapers (we didn't know that our one size fits all wouldn't fit an infant) we had a very interesting encounter with the lady in the checkout lane...  Of course it started off as many conversations do, with a "Hello Ladies" that I let slide (no need for a lengthy dialogue when I just want to get home to my rocking chair and baby snuggles).  Then the usual baby fawning, "Oh, my goodness, how old?"... and then the kicker, she looked directly at Amy and said, "Well I am assuming you carried?".....  SCREEEEEECHHH.... WIZZA WHAT?  Before I could say anything Amy exclaimed, "Yep!" and we finished out our transaction, and headed to the car.

I was shocked by the question, not the assumption.  We know everyone assumed Amy would be the carrier, and that is totally fine by me.  I certainly don't need any medals or trophies (okay, I love trophies, and a trophy would be nice, but I wouldn't ever show it to anyone...).  We especially knew once the baby was born everyone would think that Amy was the biological parent...  But I am not sure what the checkout lady was gaining by the knowledge of who carried. 

Me on the left circa 1983, H on the right.  Resemblance?

Now let me clarify...  her question doesn't make me mad.  I love people's natural curiosity, and think they are curious because it human nature.  What I am more interested in is what factors in our society make it an appropriate question (or make it an inappropriate questions.)  Part of me thinks that this was the clerks way of saying, "I recognize you as a couple, and am comfortable with your family enough to ask questions, rainbow power and see you at Pride."  This being the case, perhaps there were other things that she could have said to act in affirmation, but I can get down with that.  Then there is also the possibility, that she is a checkout clerk and has to find something to talk about... and that is something that people immediately wonder. 

I think the phrasing of the question is also interesting to me...  she didn't ask which one of us carried, she openly admits that she is assuming.  In a perfect world, maybe I would have pressed a little bit more and asked why that was her assumption...  but honestly, I know why, but it would have been interesting to hear it from her point of view.  We all learn about making assumptions... don't judge a book by its cover and all that, but assumptions are an important way to processing knowledge that we cannot know completely.  Without assumptions, we would be over run with details. 

Hayden agrees that is doesn't
matter.  She loves us just the same.

But more importantly, this exchange really affirmed for me how unimportant it is, who carried Hayden.  When Amy said, "Yup" I thought... yup.  She later told me, it wasn't lying... she does carry her.  She carries her around the house, and up and down the steps, and in and out of stores... so technically she does and did carry her.  But  more importantly, I don't feel a special connection to Hayden because she grew in my belly.  (I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge the fact that there was a fear that Amy and I would have different connections to her based on my biology... but it has been quite the opposite.)  Amy is her Mama, through and through.  Amy nurses her to sleep, and I find it just as wonderful to watch her snuggle with Amy, than to snuggle her myself.  I can't imagine Amy or myself loving her any more, or any less based on who was her biological parent.  So I don't care what people assume... because it doesn't matter.  The store clerk may as well have asked us what our favorite Chinese food was, or if we had ever been in a hot air balloon, because both of those questions are as relevant as the one she asked.  So, from this awkward exchange, we found something really powerful.  So thank you check-out clerk, your assumption led to our revelation.