Wyley Simpson, 28, is happy to have finally given birth to a baby boy.
But the thing is, Wyley is a transgender man who shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant in the first place.
Wyley lives in Texas with fiancé, Stephen Gaeth and started transitioning to being male at the age of 21.
Wyley still retained his vagina and female reproductive organs but because of the testosterone therapy, he stopped having periods and doctors told him that he couldn’t become pregnant. Which is why he was shocked to discover he was pregnant in February 2018.
Despite not feeling ready for parenthood, the couple decided to push through with the pregnancy. Wyley gave birth to Rowan via emergency C-section on September 2018.
While he couldn’t deny the fulfillment that pregnancy gave him, Wyley says that the abuse he faced from strangers during that period makes him not want to repeat the experience.
Wyley said, “It’s not every day that someone sees a pregnant man walking down the road, so we received a fair amount of abuse.
“I would be told that I’ll never be a man, “men don’t carry babies” and everyone called me ‘it.’”
Since Wyley had surgery to remove his female breasts, he could not breastfeed Rowan. He plans to make the full transition into getting a penis in the future.
In an interview with KENS5, Wyley revealed that he hadn’t had a menstrual cycle “in years” at the time he met Stephan.
“We talked about testosterone and what I had been told by his doctors and what we had believed to be the truth. Turns out, that wasn’t the truth,” he said.
It was only after going through 11 weeks of morning sickness that Wyley found out he was pregnant.
“I was nervous. I was very emotional, I started crying. I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled. “I was already worried as this was my first pregnancy.”
“But I was also nervous because I had to deal with a lot of stigma behind me being a pregnant man.
“Alongside receiving rude comments from other people, the pregnancy took a lot for me emotionally.
“Having gone through the transitioning process since I was 21 years old, having a physical baby bump was something so feminine that it messed with my head.
“But it was all worth it to have Rowan and to become a father – I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
But despite the joy of having a child, he doesn’t look forward to repeating the experience and says he won’t carry a child again.
He said: “Once my physical bump had disappeared and I was able to take my hormones again, I felt good about everything.
“Myself and Stephan suddenly turned into a gay couple with a baby, as opposed to me being a pregnant man.
“And Rowan is amazing, he made all of the mental and physical pain completely worth it.
“Now myself and Stephan are just reveling in fatherhood and can’t wait to continue our journey as a family.”
About his plans moving forward, he said: “I am looking to fully transition in the future, so the likelihood of having another child naturally is unlikely.
“It was a great feeling to be able to carry Rowan, feeling him kick and going to baby scans, but for me as a person, it isn’t something I can continue to do.
“I don’t see myself as any less of a man because of what happened, but I just do not identify in such a feminine way as to be pregnant – so it won’t be happening again.
“But I am glad that I got to go through something as amazing and natural as birthing my own child, it’s definitely made mine and Rowan’s bond so much closer.”