My Trans Child And I: Two and the Same

"It would not be the first time folks would fail to understand that my well-being and my baby’s well-being were interdependent."

Getting to be two people is maybe the strangest and most wonderful thing about being pregnant. Sort of. Okay, let’s just say it’s like sharing a body. Or maybe the baby’s taking your body over? By month seven, JJ was very much in charge, letting me know they needed more room every time they jabbed a tiny little elbow, knee, or foot into my bladder.

Yet, the Christian Right and so-called pro-life folks appear to have the desire to make the relationship between a mother and their child altogether stranger by conceiving of their respective bodies as warring parties. I was introduced to this odd notion that what affects a baby is somehow separate from what affects its mother when I was 30 months pregnant with JJ and came down with a super bad cold.

I’d refused to take any medications during my pregnancy. It’d taken me a long time to get pregnant in the first place, and for the early part of the pregnancy, I was very worried I might miscarry. As a result, I got extra anxious about doing anything that might “harm” the baby, such as drinking caffeine or taking cold meds.

But my cold was severe, and I was about to board a plane for a job interview. On hearing the nasally intonations of my voice over the phone, my mother begged me to consider taking cold medication. I tend to do what my mother says, so I googled and found a few products purporting to be safe for both myself and the kid I was carrying. Back then, we shared a body.

And so I drove our Xtra Large self to Walgreens and perused the cold medication aisle, then brought a few medications up to the resident pharmacist to avail myself of his expertise. He angled in, looking at each box warily, scrutinizing the listed ingredients. I liked that. I was wary too. My body was a temple soon to be turned into a pack-n-play. He shook his head.

“I worry about blood pressure with this one,” he said, pointing at one of the meds I’d passed across the counter.

“Actually,” I exclaimed, “my blood pressure has been great!”

A dark cloud landed on his brow. He looked up, annoyed. “I wasn’t talking about you,” he sneered. “I’m worried about the baby.”

It would not be the last time folks would fail to understand that my well-being and my baby’s well-being were interdependent. But at the time, the pharmacist’s response struck me as so strange I took a step back from the counter.

JJ now attends the 10th grade. Fifteen years after I was scolded by this pharmacist, JJ is faced with a binary that is similarly accusatory and exclusionary: the ridiculous lack and availability of gender-neutral bathrooms.

I don’t know about you, but I have to pee a lot, mainly because I love my water. JJ, however, refuses to hydrate while at school because it will result in the inevitable need for a “bio-break,” which means they’ll then need to head to the gender-neutral restroom, which happens to be in the school basement.

When JJ started high school, I thought it was great that they even had a gender-neutral bathroom.

However, about a month ago, I had yet another “saying-it-doesn’t-make-it-so” revelation with regard to this bathroom.

Heading to a parent-teacher conference, JJ and I were walking through the high school together after we’d had our Starbuck’s afterschool pick-me-up and we both needed a bio-break. I headed over to the so-called women’s room. JJ disappeared into an elevator that took them down to the bowels of the building—no pun intended—to the gender-neutral bathroom.

You gotta wonder why this bathroom is in the basement in the first place, no? JJ commented that most of their classes are on the second floor. The five minutes they are given to move between classes does not allow them enough time to journey to the depths of the building to access this particular restroom.

Ask yourself: Have you ever really needed to pee? Really badly? Have you ever worried about finding a bathroom in time? Now imagine only being able to use a bathroom in a basement while you are stationed on the second floor. There are two flights of stairs and one elevator ride. Have you started sweating yet? I’m on the verge of tears just thinking about it.

The literal and physical difficulty my child faces in attempting to access a safe and appropriate bathroom speaks volumes. It’s certainly not respectful of their needs. The high school basement is, according to JJ, kind of scary.

I’ll bet it is! High school is scary enough on the main floor!

As a parent, you know you have to let your kid go if you want them to grow up. We want our kids to grow up because it is good for them and, one hopes, they will be in a position to carry on our values, contribute to the world, and enjoy the beautiful thing that living on this planet is.

The trans hatred in our country makes it awfully hard for me to let JJ go.

And I think back to that divide that the pharmacist assumed when chastising me for (selfishly?) misunderstanding that he was talking about “the baby’s” health and not my own. Even the fact that he referred to JJ as the baby and not your baby.

Why do you take my baby away from me in a sentence, before they are even born, treating me as if I would ever intend to harm them in-utero?

What that pharmacist did not know is that I succeeded in getting pregnant after three rounds of IVF (involving a total of nine embryos) to have JJ. It was a process that required daily vigilance and a hell of a lot of injections, which I administered to myself. It was far from easy.

I have encountered folks who voted for Trump and tell me, with earnestness, that things are going to get better. Better than what? As far as I’m concerned, every single person who voted for Trump advocated for outright violence to be enacted on my trans child.

Why do people like that pharmacist act like they're protecting my baby from me and then create a world in which I am afraid to let my kid out of the house? Fifteen years after giving birth to JJ, I went to the trouble to have a security system installed in our home. I often forget to activate it when the house is empty. The fact is, I got it to protect my kid when they are alone inside the house.

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Hello, dearest Gender Defiant friends! WE ARE BACK!

As you may already know, Gender Defiant is welcoming three additional writers to the platform. You will get to meet them next week! Because we clocked our own overwhelm with regard to our own In-Box newsletters, we’ve decided to publish our essays only ONCE A WEEK. You don’t have to thank us. Just read us.

Next Wednesday, we will publish an introduction to the new folks who will keep Gender Defiant alive and make it thrive. Wednesday’s our Pub Day. <3