Pregnant “Dads” Are the Center of Their Own Universe
If you’re trans, you only need to care about yourself
If you put “things that pregnant women shouldn’t do” into Google, you get millions of hits. A partial list includes exhortations for avoiding:
Sporting activities where you could fall (such as horseback riding, skiing, snowboarding, or ice skating) or could potentially be hit in the abdomen by a projectile (football, soccer, baseball, or tennis). Also, mountain climbing, scuba diving and weightlifting.
Any beauty treatments that require you to be exposed to high or concentrated levels of heat, including tanning salons, hot stone treatments, body wraps, and saunas, hot tubs or steam rooms. Also avoid spray tans, skin care products containing retinoids, formaldehyde, and hydroquinone (all found in most acne creams), Botox injections and chemical peels, piercings or tattoos and teeth whitening products or procedures.
Amusement parks and roller coasters
Painting and decorating
X-rays
Anything that contains phthalates, which are commonly found in plastic packaging or containers, in many skin care products and any fragranced cosmetics.
Smoking (anything, including secondhand smoke).
Drinking alcohol or using any recreational substances.
Using complementary therapies.
“Too much” caffeine (found in coffee, tea, carbonated drinks and energy drinks). Ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), ACE inhibitors, some cold medications, most herbal remedies including juniper berry, devil’s claw, ginseng, and aloe vera.
Aromatherapy with essential oils derived from certain herbs including sage, wormwood, mugwort, and others.
“Eating for two” or dieting to lose weight.
Soft cheeses, unpasteurized milk products and undercooked or raw meat, fish and eggs, or any fish high in mercury. Any precut fruits or vegetables or raw sprouts, deli meats or any leftovers that are more than a day old. Spicy, salty, sweet, oily or overcooked foods, all marinated foods, pickled goods, processed foods, and foods that are high in monosodium glutamate. Drinking more milk than is necessary.
Changing a litter box or coming into contact with cat feces.
Standing or lying down for extended periods of time.
One site ended its litany of “do not do/eat these things” with “don’t stress”!!
I also found this admonition, “Pregnancy is a time filled with joy—and sacrifices. During these nine months, you are encouraged to err on the side of caution to keep you and your little one healthy.”
What was not on anyone’s list of things to avoid when pregnant? That would be the administration of excessive amounts of exogenous testosterone.
Women want to keep their babies safe
In my experience, the vast majority of women who are pregnant really want to safeguard their babies before they are born. Planned or unplanned, wanted or disastrous, most women are mindful of the incredible vulnerability of the new life they can feel growing within them and are willing to make some drastic sacrifices to ensure the delivery of a healthy child.
Matrescence is defined as the process of becoming a mother; the physical, psychological and emotional changes we go through that commences in pregnancy, becomes turbocharged through the experience of labor and birth and is gradually cemented in over the months or years of the mother/baby relationship forged through breastfeeding:
“The physical and emotional changes of pregnancy and, then, the experience of labor, birth, and breastfeeding play vital roles as women make the transition to motherhood.”
Becoming a mother is a transitional period on a par with puberty. The growth and development of both the fetus and the woman are guided by the hormonal changes of pregnancy. This is a lifelong journey for most women who have babies. Even women who don’t remain pregnant (due to miscarriage or termination) retain evidence that their bodies once contained another potential human being. Fetal microchimerism is a mammalian phenomenon that means that rogue fetal cells can be found in the cadavers of old women whose children are elderly themselves.
As in puberty, pregnant women have to negotiate changing bodies and feelings that can be overwhelming at times. This is all by design to propel women to foster an attachment to their babies by giving more and more of themselves, so they are primed to care for their newborns who rely on them for their very survival.
This exquisite process can be derailed by modern obstetric care that turns what was once a family affair into a medicalized risk averse event. No longer do women realize they are pregnant by noticing the early changes in their bodies, but by peeing on a stick and hoping (or not) to see those two blue lines. Gradually getting to know their baby via his or her movements has been replaced by ultrasound photos on the fridge door. Rather than being considered the expert in her own body, women now wait to be told if their bodies are OK or if they are found wanting.
As a society, we no longer trust women, or their bodies and we pay the price of this disconnection with worsening levels of mental distress that impacts on the next generation.
The ultimate endpoint is “pregnant dads”
Some women become so disassociated from their bodies that they declare they are really men.
I want to make it clear that in this post I am talking about women who have adopted a male identity, but choose to become pregnant despite the fact that no real man is capable of pregnancy, gestation or birth.
I am not discussing an ever-growing number of detransitioners who realized that they are not men, despite sacrificing their breasts and possibly their fertility to a confused and delusional ideology. These women grieve deeply for what they so easily discarded at a vulnerable time in their development. They often carry a lot of guilt worrying about any harms their past actions may have on the new lives they are creating, which is most easily seen in no longer having the ability to breastfeed their babies. You can read about one of these women here:
What is a distinguishing feature that separates these two groups of natal females?
Women who have matured into their female bodies (even if they no longer look as feminine as they would have without the effects of testosterone and mutilating surgeries) fit the profile of those who adjust their lives to create the best conditions possible for their health and especially, the health of their unborn babies.
While women who remain entrenched in their male identity continue to center themselves and their desire to appear as manly as possible over the welfare of their children.
Ignoration is defined as the state of being ignorant, the action of ignoring something, or the state of being ignored. It is willful blindness and ignoring reality in spades. And it is what is promoted in this study called Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the “normal”: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender pregnancy.
I have already discussed this research in a previous post but am taking a different angle here than I did there.
Why do pregnant “men” center themselves over the wellbeing of their babies?
In a one-word summary: TESTOSTERONE.
What appears to convert women into men? Testosterone given in huge quantities changes female appearance into that of males. It does not cause anyone to “transition” to the opposite sex; nothing can achieve this aim. Mammals can’t change sex and when it comes to pregnancy, gender is irrelevant because producing a new person is a sexed activity.
Both sexes produce testosterone; in women this is produced in our ovaries. In women testosterone affects brain maturation through many cellular and molecular processes that alter structure and function of neural systems and influence behavior as well as providing neuroprotection. It plays a part in reproduction and sexual development, puberty, cholesterol regulation, distribution of body fat, and inflammatory response. Additionally, testosterone regulates menstruation, prevents osteoporosis through the minimization of bone loss, aids in conception of pregnancy, and stimulates the growth of pubic and underarm hair.
In other words, women need testosterone to live optimally healthy lives, but we need only a fraction of what normal men need for their own health.
Fetal development is carefully planned and when tampered with, can go catastrophically awry. Women who were prescribed thalidomide know this as do those whose mothers drank alcohol while pregnant and are now left with the permanent legacy of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
A teratogen is any substance, agent, or process that interferes with normal prenatal development, causing the formation of one or more developmental abnormalities in the fetus. Testosterone is a fetal teratogen. High levels of testosterone during pregnancy have been associated with fetal growth restriction and cardiovascular and metabolic syndrome in babies and mothers. Exogenous testosterone can also be associated with urogenital abnormalities in female fetuses. This is the reason that responsible health authorities advise that if you, as a trans man are planning a pregnancy or find yourself accidentally pregnant, you should also cease any regular testosterone administration.
Prioritizing the desires of adults over the future of babies
But according to some trans lobbyists, the mental welfare of “men” should be prioritized over any possible harms to babies.
Which brings us back to Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the “normal”: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender pregnancy.
According to the trans lobby, women who suffer from gender dysphoria need to take continuous amounts of testosterone to feel OK, requiring them to cease this vital gender affirming treatment is both unreasonable and proof of the transphobia of those caring for “pregnant people”.
The authors of the Medical uncertainty study rail against the concerns of health care providers who provide “gendered” care, by which they mean that the maternity care system is set up for women alone (which it does do because - news flash! - only natal women will be needing this sort of care). They regard it as problematic that “normal fetal outcomes” are considered as these seemingly ignore the mental health challenges that pregnant “men” may have by forgoing testosterone for a period of time.
Readers are told that “cisnormativity and judgement” are the reasons why maternity health professionals spend equal amounts of time on women and their fetuses. They decry the “normative fetal-focused precautionary approach” that all responsible health professionals take when caring for someone who is pregnant. At least one professional who was interviewed said the quiet part out loud: “if you couldn’t deal without testosterone, then you probably shouldn’t be pregnant”. Personally, I couldn’t agree more with this statement; the incredulity of others in dealing with “pregnant men” is justifiable.
The authors make a valiant effort to equate women with PCOS to those taking excessive amounts of exogenous testosterone, but really there is no case to answer here. The parallels they attempt to draw are a combination of useless comparators that if they prove anything, actually bolster the case that too much testosterone is not good for female bodied persons. Women with PCOS often struggle with becoming pregnant and breastfeeding and all the women I have cared for with this condition would not wish it on anyone. That women would choose to create adverse conditions for having babies is anathema to them.
Is being a “pregnant dad” a barrier to mothering a baby?
In an earlier paragraph I said that matrescence is defined as the process of becoming a mother. How does believing that you are a pregnant father interfere in this process?
The changes that we go through during pregnancy insure the growth and development not just of the baby but of the woman as a mother. To believe that you are not a woman means a necessary severing of what evolution has designed for us to ensure the survival of our babies. The journey of pregnancy, labor and birth is the foundation of our willingness and ability to make the personal sacrifices needed so our babies can not just survive, but thrive.
In her book, Ourselves as Mothers, written by Sheila Kitzinger, she writes, “Everything that happens once a baby is born is the outcome of all that has come before.” Do “pregnant men” face the tasks of pregnancy the way that women do? The hormonal, body and emotional changes of pregnancy are how women make the transition to motherhood and prepare themselves for a new and sometimes frightening phase of life. The complex and deliberate hormonal changes of pregnancy foster a mother’s attachment to her growing baby and act as a guarantee that women won’t abandon their babies after birth.
What happens when testosterone predominates and overrides the normal course of pregnancy? What is the result of women being “affirmed” in centering themselves over the optimal development of new humans who have not consented to having their futures altered or queered? What happens when the possibility of breastfeeding has literally been removed, limiting the ongoing relationship development that is essential for optimal maternal and infant wellbeing?
That medical providers should deviate from the principle of “do no harm” to divert treatment into areas where the evidence indicates harm will be caused is unacceptable to me. Any perspective that is being driven by a devotion to an ideology, emotions, and personal desires has strayed so far from the foundations of evidence-based medicine, that it is no sort of medicine at all.
And that long list of “do nots” listed at the start of this post? Even though some of them are a bit silly or even strictly unnecessary, they serve as a societal indication of care for future generations of humankind. Protecting the unborn is a universal concept that can be found in every cultural setting that has ever been. Social justice advocates, railing against “precautionary, offspring-focused treatment approaches” that serve to put the interests of adults over those who are actually vulnerable (because they are not yet born) are practicing a form of eugenics that harms all of us.
It’s so very patriarchal that once people claiming to be men start having babies the whole idea of sacrifices for the unborn goes out the window. It would be funny if it wasn’t so infuriatingly sad.
Trans identified men are celebrated when they win in women's sporting events and beauty pageants, trans identified women when they birth babies. It's almost like....men & women are different in some ways.