Kiwi trans parent
Papa Scout gives birth
New papa Scout BarbourEvans can’t remember a moment when giving birth to a baby wasn’t part of “their” future – even when they started changing to a different gender.
As the Dunedin student deftly juggles bottles in one hand and a little daughter in the other, Scout – who identifies as takatapui and uses the pronoun “they” instead of he or she – shares how it’s always been a dream to have a baby since they were a youngster.
“I guess it’s young to have a baby at 23, but I’ve wanted to have children my whole life,”
tells Scout, who was a girl before coming out as non-binary aged 18. “Even as a kid, I was obsessed with a doll that I was given when my little brother was born. I knew that one day I would have a family and then I started transitioning.”
Two years into physically transforming their body, including surgery to remove breasts, Scout decided to give pregnancy a shot ahead of further operations.
To their astonishment, they fell pregnant straight after stopping testosterone therapy and a day after their cherished nana’s funeral.
“That was March last year and suddenly I was pregnant really quickly using donor sperm – and now she’s here!”
Scout, who will be known as Papa to their daughter, explains that the decision to start a family on their own in their early 20s couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.
“People think when you start testosterone, it will make you infertile and it’ll stop you from being able to conceive, and that’s not the case,” tells Scout, adding the operation to create a flat chest happened just four months before conceiving. “I knew I was going to need revision surgery, so I got pregnant between.”
And while it may have come as a surprise to the wider world, the announcement utterly delighted their family.
“My grandmother didn’t think she was ever going to have great-grandchildren, my parents thought it would be a very long time before my younger brother got around to it and everybody thought the testosterone would stop me from having children,” says Scout.
Even so, the Otago Polytech third-year student, whose
gender is marked as X on their passport, reveals it took nearly a dozen tests to be convinced they were truly pregnant within the first month of trying.
Tried&tested!
“I took one test and it was positive, and I was a bit shocked,” they admit. “Then I did about six more and a blood test, then I saw the midwife and did a couple more blood tests just to make sure, but I still didn’t quite believe it. And then we did an eight-week ultrasound so that I definitely saw it there and believed it!”
With the baby due just before Christmas, Scout says the pregnancy was marred by nightmare hyperemesis gravidarum that lasted until the day the baby girl, affectionately dubbed “Pepi”, was born.
“I had morning sickness on steroids and spent a lot of time at the hospital getting IV fluids, and did all my classes on video with a bucket just off screen,” recalls Scout.
Pepi – whose real name is only known to family and close friends to protect her privacy – was born a week and a half overdue,