Man Is Six-Months Pregnant

Thomas Beatie and his wife, Nancy, are expecting their first child in early July.

But this is no ordinary pregnancy.

The child is being carried by -- the 34-year-old Bend, Ore. MAN.

People magazine did a photo shoot with the couple, and People Senior Editor Patrick Rogers filled in Early Showviewers Thursday.

Rogers admits, "This is a story that takes a little getting used to."

Beatie looks like a man.

But, as Rogers explained, Beatie "started his life as a woman, and transitioned (a decade ago), became legally a man. He still has his female reproductive organs, and now, he's pregnant, six-months pregnant."

Beatie is a transgenedered male. He had his breasts reconstructed.

Rogers says Beatie was born a woman but "says that he has felt that he was a man since birth, since childhood. His wife, however, had a hysterectomy. So, she's unable to carry a child for the couple.

"They decided they want to have a baby. They can use artificial insemination for Thomas to get pregnant. So he just decided, 'Why don't I do it?' They could have hired a surrogate. He could have provided the egg that could have been fertilized and gone to a surrogate. But he just said ... 'Why would I hire a surrogate when I could do it myself? Who's going to take better care of our child than myself?' "

The couple taped an interview with Oprah Winfrey for a show airing Thursday and, in excerpts on the show's Web site, Beatie says, "I'm a person and I have the right to have my own
biological child."

Beatie, Rogers pointed out, "has been taking hormones for years to become a man. He has a beard and mustache and masculine attributes. He had to stop taking testosterone to get pregnant. He stopped taking it before he went through artificial insemination. And now, during the pregnancy, there can be no male hormones. But his doctor says that his levels of hormones are actually normal for a pregnant woman -- that this is a pregnancy without any complications at all."

Beatie plans to give birth vaginally, Rogers says, adding that, "His plan is not to have an epidural, to have a natural childbirth on or about July 3."

Rogers spoke to Beatie by phone for hours, and Beatie told him the pregnancy had been a secret, but, "The reason we're hearing about the story now is that Thomas is showing, and people are starting to notice it.

"We talked to neighbors who said, 'This is a great couple. Whatever is right for them, is right for them.'

"But ... Thomas and Nancy are worried that other people in their town, and in the whole country, are going to react very strongly, some negatively."

According to some doctors, Thomas probably isn't the first transgendered man to get pregnant, since a transgendered man has the same sex organs as a woman.