Scanner

It turns out that Thomas Beatie's Female to Male to pregnant dad transformation isn't as trailblazing as we thought. We all know about the gender-bender "labels are for jars" Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Junior, which addressed male pregnancy years before anyone else would touch it with a ten foot pole. But did you know that ten years ago a German PhD student, who was born female but lived as a man, also decided to carry his child? Unlike Beatie, the German didn't share his story... until now, ten years after the proud father gave birth to his daughter.

Queerty links to the Daily Express story. Who would have guessed that a trans person would find solace in the German Scouts? 

Dylan, 40, and his 10-year-old daughter Joanna opened their home to the Sunday Express to explain how a woman turned into a man, had a baby and became a dad.

American transsexual Thomas Beatie has recently gained worldwide attention after posing for a magazine showing his pregnant belly and his bearded face.

But he is merely following a trail blazed more than a decade ago by German company executive Dylan.

It is an extraordinary story he never sought to publicise, indeed those he did confide in found it difficult to believe.

“I was studying for my PhD when I became pregnant,” Dylan said. “When I told my professor I was going to have a baby, he said he didn’t need to know the details of my girlfriend’s condition.

A week after giving birth, 10-years ago

“When I told him it was me who was pregnant, it left him speechless.

“Being pregnant was weird. I didn’t have a male role model who had done it before.

“But now my daughter is a happy 10-year-old. She has two daddies who she loves, one of whom is special and can have babies.” Dylan had wanted to be a boy ever since he was a little girl – the eldest of three sisters. He describes his family as very conservative.

Their home in Germany was ruled by the beliefs of his engineer father and teacher mother, who banned television and even newspapers to protect the children from corrupting influences.

He says he hated being forced into girls’ clothes, and would have a tantrum if he was made to wear a dress.

“I told my friends I was a boy but my parents said I was a girl. When I was 15, I started wearing my father’s clothes.”

School was lonely. Dylan said girls avoided him because he was so boyish and the boys ignored him, regarding him as a strange girl

He found his salvation in the German Scouts, where the uniform was the same for boys and girls and neither gender nor sexuality played a big role.

“Gender didn’t matter in the Scouts. School was difficult, I felt totally separate from the other children but I had friends in the Scouts.”

Though small in stature, and slight in build, by the time he was in his mid 20s, Dylan was living as a man. He had small breasts, which were easily hidden beneath clothes, and mannish body language. He explains: “People always mistook me for a teenage boy, which I quite liked.”

THE GIRL WITH TWO FATHERS: Joanna has become a happy 10-year-old

Desperate to undergo the medical procedures to become the man he felt he was, he started saving money for hormone treatment and surgery.

Yet despite progress in becoming accepted as a man, he felt a growing need to have a family.

He explained: “I come from a traditional family and I feel that part of being a real man is being a father, this was very important to me and my self-image as a man.”

He and a gay friend, who also wanted to become a father, found a doctor who performed artificial insemination.

CHILDHOOD DREAMS: The young Dylan, with his younger sister, always wanted to be a boy

“The pregnancy was not a problem. I knew it was only going to be for a little while. There were lots of hormones in my system and they actually affirmed my feeling of being a man.

“I once saw an overweight young boy in a shop and felt sorry for him because my bulk at least was temporary. I felt very protective of the child that was growing inside me. My breasts grew bigger but my belly was there too and they kind of fitted. I wore baggy clothes and no one realised.

“People thought I was putting on weight. They were mostly treating me as a man and no one is going to start wondering whether a man might be pregnant.”

Only a few close friends were let in on the secret and one girl friend volunteered to be his birth partner. The birth was a surprise to Dylan. “I did not realise it was going to be so painful,” he said.

“I took a long, long shower and my birth partner was there to support me. It was pretty difficult and I almost had to have a caesarean, but by the time they found a doctor, the baby was there.

“I didn’t want to stay in the hospital afterwards, it would have been a nightmare with people treating me as a female. The birth was at 4am and I was home just a few hours later.

“I’ve never worn a bra, not even during pregnancy. My breasts became pretty big and I didn’t like that. Breast-feeding itself was very nice, it creates a close feeling to the child, I would recommend it – it’s very practical too.”

He decided to stop breast-feeding after three months to start testosterone treatment before full sex change surgery. And by the time Joanna was a toddler, Dylan had become her daddy – with hairy legs, a square jaw which he had to shave, no breasts and a deep masculine voice.

Joanna also sees her biological father, who lives two hours’ drive away. “Many of her friends don’t have, or rarely see their fathers, yet she has two,” said Dylan.

“I told her I am a special daddy who can have children and she accepts that. At her first school there was a project where they had to bring in photos of their family and talk about their relatives. She ‘came out’ to her whole class and no one teased her.”

To neighbours Dylan is simply a single dad doing his best by his daughter. Colleagues in the international com-pany where he is a manager do not know he was born a girl.

“I believe there are a lot of young transgender people who would like to have children. It is a wonderful thing to have a baby. You are more connected to humanity and society, no matter what your gender is or originally was.”

Names have been changed.

Previously: Thomas Beatie, "the Pregnant Man", on Oprah...Today!, Heart-Warming Transgender Conception Story of the Day