Transgender Man Gave Birth To First Child Since Transitioning

Pregnancy has no gender, and if you're skeptical, look no further than Kaci Sullivan—a transgender man who has been pregnant and given birth twice, once while he was presenting as a woman and again while he was presenting as a man.

Sullivan began feeling gender dysphoria, which is the distress a person experiences due to being assigned the wrong gender at birth, when he was pregnant with his first child five years ago.

"Throughout the experience, I prayed to connect with womanhood, to identify with what was happening to my body, but I couldn't, he told the Daily Mail. "I felt so hopeless and lost. I wanted to die. I fell into such a dark place and I was terrified to bring a baby into that darkness with me."

After giving birth, he came out as transgender to his then-husband.

"I felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my chest when I admitted it to myself," Sullivan said.

Sullivan and his then-husband divorced and he left his job, but he said he felt "totally liberated." Then, in 2013, he began his transition. A year later he met his current partner, Steven, and after stopping testosterone, Sullivan got pregnant again. On November 11, he gave birth to his second child, named Phoenix.

And, as expected, the second pregnancy was really difficult for Sullivan.

"As my bump grew bigger and bigger I got nervous going out in public because people would stare," Sullivan told the Daily Mail. "They noticed my abnormal shape. There was a lot of anxiety but the most important thing for me was sending the message that pregnancy is not a gendered thing."

Sullivan says that while our culture sees pregnancy as a purely feminine phenomenon, it just isn't.

"I don't see pregnancy as inherently feminine, and because I don't subscribe to make-believe gender roles, I wasn't threatened by the idea of pregnancy," Sullivan said. "It didn't make me feel any less masculine."

Sullivan wouldn't tell people the gender of his child, either, because he's going to let them decide.

"There is no way anyone could know that," Sullivan said. "They're asking me what my baby's genitals look like. This is a creepy question when we break it down."

Sullivan recorded his entire nine-month pregnancy on YouTube as a resource for other transgender and non-binary people who are considering pregnancy.

"There is a massive erasure of that culture and that community, so the confidence doesn't exist for people to connect or be aware or educate themselves," Sullivan told Madison Magazine.