Shawna & Jules Interview

Shawna:
All right. So I have a bunch of questions for you this morning. And the first question I wanted to ask was, what parenting name do you use for yourself?

Jules:
My son calls me dad or daddy.

Shawna:
Do you have a partner as well?

Jules:
Yeah. He calls her mommy or mom.

Shawna:
And then how was that intentional? How did you decide what parenting names you wanted to use?

Jules:
It was kind of intent- she definitely wanted to be called mommy or mom, something like that. Some variation of that. And I didn’t have a great idea, but I wasn’t too psyched about the clear binary of dad or daddy, but I didn’t come up with anything better in time. I still didn’t. So I was kind of thinking either it’ll feel… To me just hearing anything come out of his mouth talking about me sounds beautiful. So I’m good with it. But I think if he developed something else as a nickname for me, that will be great too. So I’ll leave it up to him, I think.

Shawna:
I think that sounds pretty magical. I like to see what they come up with too. For awhile our youngest called us by our first names and it was really, really cute, but also sometimes we wanted to be called mommy and daddy. And then once she went to kindergarten, she heard other people calling their parents names. And so she started calling us mother and father. Which is really weird. So you just never know. It can keep evolving as they go to school and they hear other things that kids say.

Jules:
Yeah. Like daddy sounded cute to me. And then I don’t know, we went on a trip and to visit my family and they were calling me and my wife, referring to us as his mom and dad. And so then he came back from that saying mom and dad, and for some reason that felt like it aged me like 16 years. And I was like, uh…

Shawna:
Mom and dad.

Jules:
Exactly.

Shawna:
So you were pregnant to have your son?

Jules:
Yes.

Shawna:
What was that like? Can you tell me about that experience?

Jules:
Yeah, so we were hoping to get my wife pregnant initially and primarily in for various reasons that was just not happening and was kind of turning out to be kind of a difficult road. And so I don’t know, it’s sort of… I’m a trans man, so it was… I know that my body is capable of doing it, but I just never really considered it. And it started to kind of pop up into the back of my mind, but not as a full thought.

Jules:
And then I don’t know, we just… It was kind of a strange epiphany like aha moment that we had. Someone else suggested it. And at first I was like, no. And then I thought about it for a second and it just felt really right. I don’t know, it was one of those weird, everything made sense and clicked and just felt like, yeah why I don’t need to do this. And I’d been on hormone replacement therapy for like 10 years. So I wasn’t even sure… I hadn’t been [inaudible 00:03:37] in all that time, so wasn’t totally sure how it was going to go, but I decided to stop taking hormones and to see how it went. Like if [inaudible 00:03:50] my cycle would return.

Jules:
And I’m pretty knowledgeable about natural health care. That’s kind of the health… that’s kind of the field that I’m in. So I was kind of on top of just kind of doing all the things I could with supplements and herbal medicine to kind of get my cycle back in a timely manner. And then we already had kind of used a sperm bank to-

Shawna:
So you had a donor picked out?

Jules:
Yeah we had a donor picked out. And we had one attempt left.

Shawna:
Oh no, it’s so expensive. And you’re just like, okay, come on.

Jules:
Yeah. And so, yeah, that was part of why I was like, I’m going to make sure this timing was right on. And it worked the first time. So it was kind of one of the things that… It felt like everything lined up in this beautiful way.

Shawna:
And beforehand you didn’t do anything to make yourself have more eggs? I know some people take some other hormones, to ovulate more.

Jules:
No, just supplements and herbs, nothing like-

Shawna:
You’re blowing my mind. On the first try. You get trophies for that, it’s amazing.

Jules:
No, but I have heard in some ways that maybe inadvertently being on testosterone for so long and then stopping that maybe that it could have had that effect in a way, because-

Shawna:
Your body wanted to get pregnant.

Jules:
I wasn’t ovulating all that time. And then my body just like, once it kind of got up back onto my natural hormone that it just ready to roll. I don’t know.

Shawna:
That makes sense to me.

Jules:
I’m not sure, but yeah.

Shawna:
Because I’m 50 this year and I noticed my body really wants to be pregnant. And so I feel like it’s that same thing, your body knows, this is my chance, c’mon.

Jules:
And I kind of… Not that long after I read that some fertility clinics, I think it was in Canada, maybe near Montreal or something that where you were using testosterone for women who are trying to… Or TM women who are trying to conceive for short periods. So I don’t know if it’s similar.

Shawna:
So you get pregnant the first time and then what?

Jules:
And then it was just kind of surreal kind of wrapping my head around, being excited and whoa this is really happening. And, and then also kind of wrapping my head around well what is this going to be like for me, I don’t know, mentally, emotionally, and as a trans man. And I talked to other trans men that I knew who had carried their children. And so I had definitely gotten some good perspective on that and knowing that other people had done it felt comforting. I wasn’t the first person in the world to do this. But then it’s one of those things that you don’t know what it’s like until you’re doing it.

Shawna:
And you might not have been the first person to do it, but you’re probably the first person that most people in your circle have met. The people that you work with, your friends. I mean, this was very new.

Jules:
Yeah. Especially like the… I definitely had friends, but people I work with especially kind of thing. And that turned out to be… For sure, I was the first person a lot of people were encountering.

Shawna:
And I feel like when you’re pregnant, you’re just on parade for people to say whatever anyway. And so you’ve added this whole extra layer of things that people can say to you. I mean, you were on hormones for 10 years, so people only knew you as a man, right? So they must’ve had all kinds of interesting, weird, slightly offensive things that they said to you, right?

Jules:
Yeah. Well, so that’s part of it too, that as tricky as that… I think… So even though I was on hormones for so long, whatever, something about my genetics, I never fully and completely passed as male. Some people read me as male. And some people read me as androgynous and some people read me as female and it’s all kind of interesting. And so that was part of it. I didn’t know how I was going to… It’s one thing for someone who’s completely read as cis male in the world to look pregnant. And it’s like a varying…

Jules:
Everyone has their own experience, but for me, I wasn’t sure how it was going to feel, because I had a feeling that maybe some people wouldn’t would start to read me more as female or… But it turned out to be, I don’t know, not at all what I would expect anyway. It was a totally all across the board experience with that, because I turned out I had no idea how people were reading me. People I assumed were reading me as female were not. And they were reading me as cis male. And so I always… Most of the time that I was pregnant, I felt so conspicuous even though in hindsight, I wasn’t. It just kind of looked like I was maybe getting a beer belly.

Shawna:
That’s what I was going to wonder, because with a man, a man can really carry a gut like that.

Jules:
And I wasn’t trying… I feel like some people are pregnant and they’re accentuating their baby bump or something. That’s real like-

Shawna:
So you weren’t doing that? You weren’t wearing-

Jules:
I wasn’t doing that-

Shawna:
Your tight baby bump t-shirts?

Jules:
I was wearing button down shirts. And it just was filling it out a little bit more. And so I remember at the tail end, one of my clients just kept… Started saying you’ve been gaining a lot of weight, is everything okay? And one month or whatever, I just kind of laughed it off. And then it was, I was getting into eight and nine months pregnant. And so at that point he said it again. Which is strange to comment on someone’s body. And so I was like, “I’m pregnant.” And month eight he laughed. And then nine months I was about to stop working. [crosstalk 00:11:10] He said it again. And he was concerned. I don’t know if he didn’t think I realized. So I was like, “no, really I’m pregnant.” And he’s like, “what? How is that possible?” And then I had to, oh… He didn’t realize. [crosstalk 00:11:24] So I think I took you on a tangent.

Shawna:
No that’s the kind of thing I was curious about because I just, I had so many weird things like that happen and I’m super, super femme presenting, cis, and so it’s just being… The things that I had happened that were like that. I just can’t even imagine if you’re presenting as a man, what the weird things that people would say to you because people also thought that I was getting gobs and gobs of weight and they had no problem talking about how big my boobs were and why was my butt so big? And it’s really funny to me that…

Jules:
Yeah, I think I got off easy in some ways, because people were trying to prepare me, you’re going to be in line at Target, and then two people are going to start telling you their pregnancy horror stories or whatever. And that didn’t happen. I got off easy on that because people were never sure.

Shawna:
People were confused.

Jules:
Maybe. Or maybe I just had a beer. It really did until the very end, it really just looked like I had a beer belly, big belly or whatever. And then at the very end, when it starts to be just ridiculously obvious then I was kind of like, I didn’t care at that point anyway.

Shawna:
At that point you just want the baby out.

Jules:
Or whatever. I don’t care what anybody says or thinks anyway. You’re in your own world, whatever. So that was a part of it that I couldn’t have anticipated going into it.

Shawna:
What about the medical professionals that you were working with? How did they…

Jules:
So in anticipation of running into many awkward scenarios, I chose to work with a midwife and planned a home birth and she was amazing. She did the IUI insemination for us. And then-

Shawna:
I didn’t even know a midwife could do that. That’s wonderful.

Jules:
And so she did that. And then once we knew we were pregnant, we just continued care with her and she could do the basic primary care all the way through. So I was lucky in that way. I had to do a few things in the regular medical world, like ultrasound, genetic testing, and people were very respectful.

Shawna:
Do you live in a big city?

Jules:
Medium sized city, maybe medium to small city.

Shawna:
Is there a college there?

Jules:
Yes.

Shawna:
That always seems to help somehow.

Jules:
I mean it’s a very progressive city in general, so yeah we’re good in that way, but I think my midwife was very kind and would kind of call ahead and try to give a heads up so that I didn’t have a terrible experience. And all the professionals, medical professionals that I worked with were great. I could tell really tried, especially the genetic screening. I just remember…. I could tell how much the person who’s doing the genetic counseling was having to change the way she thinks about the language, about talking about pregnancy, because-

Shawna:
She couldn’t be on autopilot with what she was saying.

Jules:
Yeah. Because it’s… and I appreciated the effort. And then it turned out, let’s see… It ended up having a smorgasbord of birth experience. We started out home birth, long labor. And then at some point we had to make the choice to go into the hospital. And our doula did a good job of, she also did our birth education classes. And she did a great job of preparing us for the plan B and C. You may have to go to the hospital or you may have to get a C-section and this is what this would look like. And I was just trying to glaze it over. That’s not going to be us. But she’s like, just do me a favor and make a birth plan for the hospital in case. And so we did and in our birth plan, we just said that we’re a queer family, that I was trans, pronouns that I prefer.

Jules:
And that we’d prefer it to be kind of including all the things like interventions that we’d want or didn’t want. That we preferred to be paired with a team… Anyone that was comfortable working with us. And when we did end up in the hospital, everyone was great because I think they really did let people, I think the nurses and whatnot, choose if they want to work with us. So I think we got the best possible scenario. and everyone was great. And I don’t know, it was a really nice experience. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. And that was what I was trying to avoid.

Shawna:
Did you end up having a C-section?

Jules:
Yeah we ended up having a C-section.

Shawna:
And your baby, he was fine? You didn’t have to go to the ICU or anything? He stayed with you? Or the NICU I guess.

Jules:
Yeah. He didn’t have to go to the NICU. He was fine. And yeah, he was good. He got to just be with us.

Shawna:
And then did you or your partner nurse him right away?

Jules:
No. I had already had bilateral top surgery mastectomy, and my partner didn’t [crosstalk 00:17:54] to do that. She didn’t induce lactation. But we did get… We relied on the kindness of… people gave us a lot of donor milk. So we were able to give him… Including we got some colostrum for the first little bit. So we were very lucky that way.

Shawna:
Where does donor colostrum come from? Does that… from someone whose baby didn’t make it?

Jules:
I guess it could, but this person just had produced a lot and she kept it on hand for a while in case they wanted to use it at some point. And she just wanted to make space in her freezer and was like, maybe somebody could use this and I jumped on it. So there are Facebook forums to share milk. So it got that. We were able to have him on donor milk for around 10 months.

Shawna:
That is amazing.

Jules:
I know it was the kindest, coolest people. It’s just such a beautiful thing.

Shawna:
I’m super into breast milk. So I have to ask a few questions about this. So one thing I’m always curious about is when we’re breastfeeding our own children, they’re getting the milk that’s made from the food that we eat, right? And then that’s also then the food that they’re probably most exposed to. And I’m wondering, do you think that your son, having been exposed to more variety of food through many people’s breast milk, do you notice anything about the foods that he eats? Is he more open to many foods? Or is there anything you noticed about his eating?

Jules:
I don’t know for sure if that’s what it’s around, but he has kind of a pretty good palate… kind of more… He’s open to a lot more flavorful things then I think most stereotypes of toddlers. I don’t know. He loves sauerkraut and pickles and spiceful things. Not spicy but flavorful things.

Shawna:
Keep that idea in mind because I’m really curious about that because I know for myself, especially when I’m nursing my babies, when they were younger, I had such limited food because you’re sort of, you’re not getting very much sleep and you’re just sort of jamming in whatever that you can make very quickly. I felt I don’t know that my milk exposed them to the widest variety that I like to eat. And so I’d be curious about that idea.

Jules:
I’m also curious too, because I’d also heard that what you eat while you’re pregnant gives them a taste for something. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Shawna:
I’m curious about that too, because my second child, I could barely eat with her. Everything made me throw up. It was an awful pregnancy and she has a really limited palate. And so I always wonder, was it her and her being that was making not be able to eat the things. The chicken and the egg, right?

Shawna:
It’s so curious. So moving onto more questions about… Had you previously ever had any other pregnancies?

Jules:
No.

Shawna:
So this is the one. What about… so you child is little but old enough, you’re probably starting to talk about some things. How do you talk about your pregnancy or pregnancy in general with your child?

Jules:
We’re trying to normalize it as… I mean yeah we definitely want to be talking about it starting already to just have it feel normal to him. But at the same time have him be prepared that it’s not a common experience for other people. So that, I don’t know, just in the hopes that he feels solid about it, if he gets challenged at some point by someone else’s experience or I don’t know. So we just whenever we have an opportunity, we try to just talk about it and talk about when daddy was pregnant with you this or that.

Shawna:
Does he ever say anything? I mean, kids usually use the word belly and then I just say uterus, but does he ever say, “daddy, when I was in your belly…” Does he ever ask questions about that?

Jules:
No, he doesn’t ask questions yet. He’s just like… I don’t know, when we talk about it he’s just like, “yeah.” I don’t know. I think he’s still just kind of absorbing it as a story, but he hasn’t really…. Maybe just not at that stage yet or something. I’m not sure.

Shawna:
Do any of your friends, anyone pregnant? I mean, I think that’s when it comes up a lot. When we have our friends who are pregnant around and then the kids are asking us questions.

Jules:
No, nobody’s pregnant around right now. So maybe we’ll try to find some people.

Shawna:
Find some pregnant people to go hang out with him. See if he asks questions. Did you grow up with any faith-based traditions in your family that sort of informed your experience being pregnant or how you talk about pregnancy?

Jules:
I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school, but I don’t know that it… I’m not sure that it informed anything for me, but maybe unconsciously, I’m not sure.

Shawna:
Sometimes people tell me that it’s almost the opposite. So that informed them that you really want to talk to your child about all these things that maybe your parents wouldn’t talk to you about. I don’t know. It seems it goes both ways.

Jules:
For sure, we definitely want to be as open as possible with him about lots of things. I don’t know.

Shawna:
You talked to him about orientation and identity as well.

Jules:
Yeah. It’s maybe personality, but he’s in a phase where he doesn’t even want me to show him how to… He wants to do everything by himself. He will start to ignore me when I try to… When he can tell that I’m trying to teach him something. So when we started to have conversations about orientation or identity, he just kind of glazes it over. So I think he’s picking it up, but he’s not engaging in the conversation yet. And we have friends that use different pronouns and that kind of thing.

Shawna:
Like ze, zer, that kind of thing?

Jules:
Yeah. Or they, them, whatever. And friends that… Different family compositions, like two moms, two dads, a baba, and a mom, whatever. So he’s getting that, but he’s not really… I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem engaged, interested in engaging in the conversation yet, even though I’m trying to bring it up to him he’s just like, whatever.

Shawna:
What I noticed is that pronouns are really tricky for sort of the two and three set because they don’t even really… They don’t even really pick up on the differences that we use anyway. They sort of call everybody “he,” if they identify as a boy, they kind of call everybody “he.” And I noticed it especially from boys that they call everyone “he.” And so it’s really interesting because we had a child here at my childcare who started letting us know when he was two that we were using that we were saying… He didn’t get the pronoun thing because he was just too little. But at two he started telling us, “I’m a boy.” And so it was tricky because we were waiting to follow his lead. And so we absolutely recognized that he was a boy, but because he hadn’t said that he wanted to use he him pronouns, we were still using she her.

Shawna:
And so we would say, she’s a boy. And then we waited. And then when he was about four that’s when he was able to let us know, “I’d like you to use all boy words with me.” And so I was finally like, “okay, all boy words, good, that means pronouns. I got this.” Because it had been…. I felt intuitively that he would like to do that, but we were waiting to follow his lead. And what my point was with this, I’m not sure, but just that the pronouns came later. He already knew inside of himself that he was a boy, but all the words came later.

Jules:
That’s interesting.

Shawna:
But yes, but once he knew and understood the pronouns and then it was really great to watch, especially in a small childcare setting, watch him able to advocate for himself if anyone mis-gendered. It was really powerful.

Jules:
Oh wow. At four, that’s amazing.

Shawna:
He was letting us know at two. At two, he would wake up in the middle of the night and he would must be having some sort of dream and he would yell, “no, I’m a boy.” And so two was when he let his parents know that he wouldn’t wear the clothes that they had purchased for him, he needed to wear all boy clothes. And so it was really, really powerful. I’m glad I got to have that experience.

Shawna:
So is there anything that you would want your child to know out of this experience? Something that you learned in this experience that you would want your child to know about? because I guess my audience for the book is a parent and a child reading together. And so I’m wondering, is there anything that you want people to know or children to know about you… What pregnancy and birth and having your job gave, did, I don’t know.

Jules:
Let me think about this for a second. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s just mainly that… I don’t know, I feel that… I’m trying to work this out. Yeah. I mean, I think that there’s all sorts of different ways to look at pregnancy. No, I don’t know. Scratch that. Hold on.

Jules:
Okay wait. Ask me again.

Shawna:
Now I’m wondering maybe I’m phrasing the question wrong. So picture yourself or someone else and you’re you’re laying in bed, it’s bedtime. You’re cuddling up with your child and you’re looking at a book together, a picture book that talks about pregnancy. It mentions the miscarriage, It mentions abortion. It might mention adoption. And it’s really important to me that… I mean, I think it’s going to have a lot of binary every language, but I don’t want it to be all exclusive. In the Shout Your Abortion movement, we don’t say women have abortions. We say women and people who can become pregnant have abortions. So it’s really important for me to include non-binary language and talk about people with uteruses can get pregnant. So you’re sitting there and you’re reading a book about these kinds of things to your child. Is there something from your pregnancy experience that you would want to see in a book?

Jules:
I liked the idea of being able to talk to him about… We are starting to talk a little bit about, you weren’t necessarily in my belly you were in my uterus. I mean, it’s tricky, it’s hard to include what’s comfortable for everybody, but it’d be great to have more options for non-binary ways to describe… I know that there are some books that are, some people create sperm and some people have uteruses kind of a thing and not necessarily women are pregnant, women get babies or give birth. So yeah, I guess that would go back to maybe start of one of the questions that you asked previously too just kind of talking more… A little bit more about maybe the biology of it in a way. Like appropriate terms that we would use. Or just even acknowledging that there’s different… That there are different ways to experience this. Which is what you’re doing.

Shawna:
Yes. I mean, I’m trying for. It’s just been really an honor, a gift to listen to people’s stories. I listened to so many birth stories anyway in my work. I’ve been a childcare provider for over 25 years. And so generally, somewhere along the process of taking care of someone’s children, they’re going to tell you about their pregnancy and their birth story. But they don’t tell you about miscarriages and abortions and a lot of other things. Usually, generally speaking. So this process has been really wonderful. And I really appreciate you talking to me today and telling me a little bit about your experience.

Jules:
Thank you. It was nice talking to you too.