A trans man has revealed he has given birth to a healthy baby after suffering through years of miscarriages with his partner.
Frankie, who is a trans man, and Rāwā welcomed their new child Hiwa-i-te-Rangi into their home at Canterbury, on New Zealand’s South Island, in 2023.
The couple came forward with the news this week in hopes to show trans couples it is possible to have a child, but Frankie admits it comes with its challenges.
Before getting pregnant, Frankie read his testosterone therapy could cause infertility and after multiple miscarriages and several rounds of unsuccessful low-level fertility interventions the couple began losing hope.
All that changed on New Year’s Eve in 2022 when Frankie, who had not been drinking, started vomiting.
When the couple returned home Frankie did a pregnancy test ‘because, you know, sometimes you just do it for s***s and giggles’, he told NZ Herald.
It immediately returned a positive result.
‘I couldn’t even say anything and Rāwā just looked at it and then he didn’t say anything and then we had a shower in silence and I don’t think we said anything for a few hours because we were just shell-shocked,’ Frankie said.
Frankie had suffered from gender dysphoria, a condition where a person’s sense of identity does not match their assigned gender at birth.
He said he did not worry when the physical signs of pregnancy began emerging because it was a deliberate choice by the couple to try for a pregnancy.
Rāwā and Frankie had to wait seven months for Frankie’s testosterone stores to deplete before they could start trying to conceive.
Frankie’s hypothyroid disease was another complication but an endocrine team worked with his GP to change his treatment to accommodate pregnancy.
The biggest concern after falling pregnant was preparing for the ‘doomsday scenario’ of Frankie menstruating again as his body became more feminine.
Rāwā felt an ‘obligation to ensure Frankie was kept safe’ so immediately worked to understand a healthcare system that was not designed for trans pregnant people.
One blood clinic told the couple its tests were reserved for women at first, but Rāwā said besides that incident everything else worked fine.
When the couple finally told their family and friends about the pregnancy there was ‘a lot of screaming’.
‘It was just quite magical and very lovely and everybody and their cats and dogs wanted to be the aunty and uncle,’ Rāwā said.
Rāwā and Frankie have decided to share their story in a new TVNZ documentary airing on November 11.
The couple will discuss their previous experiences with miscarriage and Frankie coming off testosterone before showing his home water birth and its complications.
Frankie said he wants his story to raise visibility around carrying a child as a trans man.
During the lowest points of the pregnancy Rāwā said other trans people’s responses to their story kept them going.
‘We might never have been able to have children and we had a couple of miscarriages but we might have given up at some point and just said, you know, what, we can’t do this any more,’ he said.
Looking forward, Rāwā and Frankie say their main focus is on raising their son, but they are hoping to grow their family with more children in the future.
‘If we only ever have one child, we are so blessed that we had such a beautiful birth and we were so well loved and looked after. But also, you know, we do want to have more children,’ Frankie said.