| | | Transgender Parents Will Explain to Their Kids: 'Sometimes Men Have Babies'
January 16, 2015 - 1:05 PM
By Melanie Hunter
On the surface, Bianca and Nick Bowser look like typical parents. They have two biological sons together - a three-year-old and a 17-month-old. However, Bianca and Nick are transgender: Bianca was born a boy, named Jason, and Nick was born a girl, named Nicole.
At five years old, Bianca – then Jason – was sneaking into “mom’s closet” and “putting on a pair of heels” – an experience Bianca described as liberating. Conversely, Nicole always wanted to be a boy. “I looked at boys. I saw, you know, boys with their shirts off, and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to look like,’” Nick said.
As Jason and Nicole, they both came out as gay, but something felt off, they said.
“It wasn’t until I got a little bit older that [I realized] I wasn’t a lesbian, and not all lesbians think how I think,” Nick said. “Basically, my brain is telling me I want to be a man.”
Nick and Bianca both still have their reproductive organs. They had been taking hormones and were considering gender reassignment surgery.
“I had already made my plans, went through all my final therapy sessions, and then I met Nick,” Bianca said.
The Bowsers explained their family dynamics in an interview set to air on ABC’s “20/20” Friday night.
The couple wanted children and decided to conceive naturally. Nick gave birth by C-section, an experience Nick describes as “the darkest time of my entire life.”
“The almost 20 months total of my life [when they had both kids] was probably the darkest time in my entire life. My brain was telling me that I was one person,” Nick said. “My body looks like a completely different person. It was a daily struggle between mind and body. I didn’t want to leave the house.”
After their youngest son was born, Nick’s breasts were removed. Bianca said their children’s well-being comes ahead of sex-change surgery.
“Now that we have our children, their well-being, their lives, that’s what’s important,” Bianca Bowser said. “If it comes around to where I am able to, then that would be great, but it’s no longer about me. It’s about our family.”
“We fit the basic definition of what a transgender person is,” Nick said.
“But we are man and woman,” Bianca interjected.
“Our children do not see us as transgender people. We are Mommy and Daddy,” Nick said.
Nick said people ask them how they have sex, to which he replies: “How do you have sex?”
“Same way - it works all the same way,” Nick added.
When asked what they will tell their children one day about “who Mommy and Daddy are,” Nick said, “Gradually, and in ways that they can understand. I mean eventually the questions will come about. Schools calling us and saying, ‘Your child said that his mommy has a penis’ and things like that.”
“I mean, that’s when we tell them sometimes men have babies, and sometimes mommies can’t have babies,” Nick said. “We’re telling them the truth, and I think that’s the most important thing, and in a way that they can understand.”
http://cnsnews.com/blog/melanie-hunter/transgender-parents-will-explain-their-kids-sometimes-men-have-babies |
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