A Moment of Portland PFLAG Joy is a place where our members can anonymously share meaningful experiences they’ve had as an LGBTQ+ person or someone special to an LGBTQ+ person. Let us know at info@pflagpdx.org if you have a story you’d like to share.
My husband and I waited to have our one and only child.
Photo by Tim Bish on Unsplash
We’d completed master’s degrees, worked in our professions, and were married for 7 years before we chose to have a child. We didn’t want to learn if our baby was a boy or a girl as we wanted to be surprised. We told ourselves and others who were incredulous of why we wouldn’t want to know: It doesn’t matter to us – this baby is already loved. We both work with children, and this proved to be difficult in the arena of choosing a name. We only agreed on, and arrived at the hospital with, a girl’s name in mind. After 32 hours of labor and a c-section on the horizon, I just wanted to see our little one and hold our baby tight. “It’s a girl!” I heard as I tried to peek over the blue operating screen without success. I fell back into my pillow with an exhausted sigh of relief as I heard the wail of a set of very healthy lungs immediately consume the room. My husband squeezed my hand, kissed my cheek, and rushed to stay with our daughter as the doctors finished with me. I remember laying there and feeling relieved in many ways: Thank goodness we had a girl’s name chosen! I have experience on how to be a girl and a woman in the world. I can easily be the mother of a daughter. 18 years into this journey with our child, we were told “I’m trans.” We had to get used to a different male name our child chose and new pronouns. My whole world tilted. I had to do a lot of work to understand and learn to be the mother of a son. I had to, all of a sudden, lean into, It’s a boy! This holiday season, we took our son and his partner to a seasonal performance. We all got dressed up and were excited to experience some solstice magic together. As my child got out of the car, he looked so good! He was so handsome with his closely trimmed beard, his pinstripe pants and cream sweater with his partner by his side. It hit me then, how lucky I am to have had the chance with only ONE child to experience the reality of my child’s spirit both as a girl and a boy. That may sound weird, but it has shown me what my husband and I knew all along when our baby was in the womb: It doesn’t matter to us – this child is already loved.