BABY! (Not the actual baby I was sitting for)

Yesterday and today I was babysitting a friend’s kids, a three month old girl, Isabella, and a three year old boy, Ben. (These are the friends I’m visiting in Minnesota.) Isabella isn’t much trouble – eat, poop, sleep, repeat – and Ben is a cutie. We’ve had a lot of fun building forts, playing in the snow, hunting werewolves, watching the Narnia movies, and generally being silly. And now, at the end of two days of ten long hours a day of babysitting, I have a few thoughts on being a parent, a child’s caretaker, and a mom.

My first and biggest realization is how difficult it is to be a parent. I don’t pretend these few days have given me some huge insight into the ‘real’ world of parenthood, but being a parent is undoubtedly a full-time job in a way I ‘knew’ but hadn’t really internalized. This particular babysitting gig was made more difficult by two large, poorly behaved dogs. Lots of extra energy had to be spent on making sure they didn’t eat food off the counter, diapers from the trash, and so on. So I’ll have lots more respect for parents (and, to a lesser extent, childcare providers of all sorts) after this week.

That said, some things weren’t quite as Horribly Awful as I’d imagined. Changing a diaper is yucky, and I didn’t witness any “explosions” (the mom’s term for particularly disgusting diapers or mid-diaper-changing poops), but I also didn’t end up running for the hills.

Being here also brought up some of my bittersweet thoughts on being a parent, a mom. My mom joked, before I came up here, that I’d leave my brief stint at babysitting either wanting kids immediately, or never wanting children at all. Fortunately, neither of those things happened – I do think I want kids eventually, but I don’t think I’m going to go baby-crazy after changing Isabella’s diapers the last few days. At the same time, I can’t help but think back to the idea of being an asymptotic woman (a post I coincidentally wrote almost exactly a year ago). From the post:

I’m approaching the standard definition of ‘woman’ in an asymptotic fashion. That is, I’ve gotten closer by leaps and bounds, but am nearing a final stretch [being able to bear children] which I will be unable to cross. As that happens, I’m feeling the pain of that distance more acutely than I was ten years ago, when my focus was on names and pronouns and wardrobe and presentation.

I still know that “being able to give birth” is a very lousy definition for womanhood. And I don’t think I’m less of a woman – for any good definition of the term – because of that. I’m also really glad, after sitting for my friend’s kids this week, to have stored sperm and still have the future option of being a genetic parent.

Obligatory stereotypical "pregnant woman holding her belly"

But there’s something bittersweet about the thought of having children, of knowing I can – and wanting to someday – but knowing I can’t bear children, I won’t be able to carry my child in the way my mother carried me.

In some ways, I’m thrilled to be able to worry about such things. What progress I’ve made since starting this blog, almost three(!!) years ago, when I went from worrying about students’ responses to my coming out to them to worrying about whether I’d be able to bear children. So I hope this post doesn’t come across as a complaint.

But I’m also not sure how to proceed. Looking at pages about infertility show some things I am experiencing – how to deal with feeling like less of a woman – but some things I’m not. For example, there’s no use for me researching fertility options or going to fertility doctors. I have (hopefully) usable “deposits” on ice in Chicago, and so can be the biological parent of a child, but I’m never going to get pregnant.

And I’m also not sure how to describe this experience to others, or if I should do so. Do I want to say “I’m infertile” at a bridal shower? (The most baby-centric place I can think of, where someone might hypothetically ask me if/when I’m having children.) Not really. Do I want to out myself and talk about my stored sperm? Also a ‘no.’ Dodging the question seems easiest, but isn’t something I love doing.

How do other trans people deal with these issues/

Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

…with a second child on the way, Pop’s parents have no plans to change what they see as a winning formula. As for Pop, they say they will only reveal the child’s sex when Pop thinks it’s time.

I think this is pretty cool. There’s something powerful about allowing a child to notify the world of their gender, if and when they choose to. But, of course, there are those who are objecting:

“Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

It sounds to me like the parents aren’t “ignoring children’s nature,” they’re allowing their child to identify for his or herself what that nature is. At the same time, I do think this statement of Pinker’s is probably more accurate:

“It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to keep this a secret for long. Children are curious about their own identity, and are likely to gravitate towards others of the same sex during free play time in early childhood.”

But, nevertheless, I think it’s worth it to give Pop the ability to state his or her own gender, rather than having it be built into every interaction before he or she makes a conscious decision about it. Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

When I started transitioning I knew it would be hard work. Hard physical work, like the excruciatingly painful and horribly expensive hair removal, and hard emotional work, like changing how I interact with friends and loved ones.

What I didn’t really think about were all the little ways in which it would wear me down.

Things like having people I barely know feel that they then get to make assumptions and judgments about me (not even necessarily negative ones!)  because they know I’m trans. Like Jack, whose brother and brother’s wife were both trans, so even though I just met him he felt completely comfortable asking me how long I’ve been on hormones. And, damn me for not thinking ahead, I told him instead of giving a noncommittal answer to indicate it was none of his business. An answer like “trans people go on hormones for the rest of their life” or “none of your bloody business, person-I-just-met.”

Things like the discomfort with names around people I don’t have the energy to explain the transition to. Like Paula, the sister of a friend of my mom’s, who was giving my roommates and I furniture. AR said Paula would be “riding with R” and Paula said, “Who?” And I said (awkwardly) “Oh, it’s a nickname…” Or DK who came in at work one day and asked, “Is R in?” I’m starting to feel bemusedly like I won’t need to tell anyone at work my name, because the front-of-office staff heard it from DK, my boss probably heard it from someone at a show opening when somoene else introduced me as R, etc, etc, etc.

Things like having one of my students at the Workshop ask me why I’m wearing earrings, “because aren’t they for girls?” My circular response of, “Well, I’m wearing them, so it must be OK,” isn’t nearly as good as G’s, “No, silly, earrings are for ears!” Or having a student in the hall over the summer say, “Was he a boy or a girl?” when I went back into the office. Or going down to the classroom space for work to grab something during a class and hearing students say, with gossipy glee, “Was that a boy or a girl?!”

Which isn’t to say that transitioning is all bad (although, still being off hormones, it sometimes feels that way). For example, when I went to Funk, a ridiculously-named club in the city, I went in girl-mode and was waved into the women’s room no-questions asked. Whether or not I was ‘read,’ it was a nice confidence booster. Or I got a kick out of having my boss (who I’m out to) say she “told her [eight-year-old] son about me” and he later said he felt a little uncomfortable around me because it was “weird being around someone changing genders.” (Educated eight year old!)

Well, it’s weird being someone whose changing genders, too!

-R