Kiwi dad Scout Barbour-Evans gives birth to first daughter
THE first transgender person to run for the Dunedin mayoralty has become a father for the first time.
Scout Barbour-Evans, who identifies as as gender fluid/nonbinary transgender, publicly announced their daughter’s birth on Twitter yesterday.
‘‘Look what Santa brought me this year! She arrived last Wednesday. She’s perfect and I’m in love, but we’re still adjusting to life with each other so we aren’t taking visitors or many calls.’’
Barbour-Evans, an Otago Polytech student and volunteer, conceived their first child by sperm donor. They became pregnant a few months after having a double mastectomy.
On Twitter, they went on to say they had the home birth they ‘‘so desperately wanted’’, welcoming the baby after a 10-hour-long labour.
‘‘It was pretty magic but very fast and rough on my body. Even if I’d wanted a hospital birth I wouldn’t have managed to get there.’’
Barbour-Evans added they would not being doing interviews with media until next month at the earliest. The photo accompanying the tweet was taken at Dunedin’s Meridian Mall. Barbour-Evans told Sunday News they did not plan to post further photographs revealing their baby’s face.
Last month, Barbour-Evans, who contested the Dunedin mayoralty in 2016, told Stuff stopping testosterone for the pregnancy and putting their transition on hold had been difficult.
‘‘Not being able to take my testosterone and anxiety and sleep medication meant that during the first trimester I was having those four-hour long panic attacks but it did normalise and settle as my body got used to it.’’
While other transgender dads were able to hide their pregnancy, Barbour-Evans’ small frame made that impossible, which had resulted in them being misgendered by members of the public.
Barbour-Evans told Sunday News they expected chest-feeding would spark further questions. Of Nga¯ti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa and Nga¯ti Porou descent, they said the baby would refer to them as pa¯pa¯.
They did not plan to raise their child with gender-neutral pronouns.
‘‘I don’t like the word neutral to describemy gender,’’ they said, adding they knew how confused and potentially violent people could become when asked to use different pronouns.
‘‘I don’t want to expose my child to that in any way.’’