How a transgender man gave birth

Kayden Coleman had been transgender for 10 years when he discovered he was having a baby.


Kayden Coleman’s pregnancy news was life changing. And it’s not just because the baby was discovered at 21 weeks along.

It’s because Kayden is transgender and had been living as a man for nearly 10 years with no intention of having children when he found out he was going to be a dad.

Now, nearly two years after welcoming his daughter, Azaelia, with his husband, Elijah, the Philadelphia dad reflected on his incredible family transformation in an interview with the Mirror on Thursday. “One day my back was killing me,” recalled the museum staffer turned student, who added, “It felt like there was a pillow under my stomach but there was no pillow.”

Joking about being pregnant, he tried a pregnancy test. “The results were conclusive but I still didn’t believe it,” said Kayden (who didn’t respond to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment). And after he confirmed results with a doctor he said, “I was shocked.” Kayden insisted, “I never thought about getting pregnant. Because of the male hormones, I didn’t think it was a possibility. It was definitely a surprise.”

In advance of a planned double mastectomy, Kayden had taken a six-week break from using hormones. And though the couple, who’d been dating for a year, say that they had used condoms for contraception, Kayden became pregnant during that window.

“Testosterone often shuts down ovulation,” Dr Madline Deutsch, clinical director for the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at the University of California, San Francisco, tells Yahoo Parenting. “But it doesn’t do it reliably enough to be a contraceptive.” Still, she says, “It’s pretty surprising that someone who is off testosterone for six weeks would get pregnant.”

And possibly problematic, she adds. “Getting pregnant while you have testosterone in your system is potentially a big problem for the baby,” she explains. “The recommendation is that women stop taking hormones for a minimum of three to six months before becoming pregnant so that they’re washed out of the body, because we just don’t have data yet on the impact of testosterone on a developing fetus.”

In the FDA’s categories grouping drugs that risk birth defects, the male hormone is a Category X, explains Deutsch. “It’s contraindicated and not appropriate to use. It’s like giving a blood thinner to someone with an active bleeding ulcer. So while yes, this is a wonderful, heartwarming story, from a medical perspective I’m concerned about the health of the child.”

Yet Azaelia is flourishing, according to her “Daddy” [Kayden] and “Poppy” [Elijah]. “She is amazing,” Kayden bragged. “She is an awesome kid.” And Kayden didn’t turn out to be too shabby a dad either, after getting used to it.

“Even when I first held her it hadn’t sunk in that she was mine, so I didn’t really feel much,” he told the Mirror of his daughter’s birth by caesarean section, shortly after he and Elijah married. “But I knew things would never be the same again. I was so happy to finally see her face.”

Elijah, a security guard, added that the first year was “tough,” due in no small part to Kayden’s year-long battle with postpartum

As their daughter nears age 2, though, the duo revealed they’ve gotten into a good groove. “I don’t feel like we should have been parents all along but I feel like we are great parents now,” Kayden said. “I couldn’t imagine, and don’t want to imagine, life without her.”