Friday, July 4, 2008

The Pregnant Man Gives Birth

The Pregnant Man Gives Birth

Thomas Beatie, also known as The Pregnant Man, has given birth to a girl, he confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

Beatie, 34, who began life as a woman and legally switched to a male identity, while preserving his female reproductive organs, and his wife Nancy, 46, welcomed a daughter at an Oregon hospital on June 29. Both Beatie and his daughter are healthy and doing well, he tells PEOPLE.

Beatie, who took twice-weekly doses of testosterone and had his breasts surgically removed during his female-to-male transition, made headlines around the globe last April when he announced in an exclusive interview in PEOPLE and on The Oprah Winfrey Show that he was expecting a child – while legally living as a man.

Raised in Hawaii, he spent the first two decades of his life as Tracy Lagondino, a Girl Scout, former model and finalist in a Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant. Beatie told PEOPLE that he began to dress and live as a man in his 20s, in time officially changing his gender on his passport and driver's license.

In 2003, he legally married Nancy, a divorced mother of two who had had a hysterectomy as a result of endometriosis.

The couple became pregnant using donor sperm and Thomas's eggs, through artificial insemination, after relocating in 2005 to Bend, Ore., where they operate a T-shirting printing business.

Their baby girl is Thomas's first child. "The only thing different about me is that I can't breastfeed my baby. But a lot of mothers don't," he told PEOPLE.

Despite published reports, Beatie says the baby was not delivered via C-section. He intends to publish a book about his experience this fall.

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