Trans man Scout Barbour-Evans gives birth in New Zealand
Trans New Zealand dad Scout Barbour-Evans gave birth to their daughter earlier this month (One News New Zealand/youtube)
Transgender New Zealand man Scout Barbour-Evans has given birth to a daughter.
Barbour-Evans, who defines as transmasculine and uses they/them pronouns, announced the birth on Saturday (December 22), tweeting: “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,” added Barbour-Evans, who became pregnant using a sperm donor, a few months after they had a double mastectomy.
“I’ve desperately wanted to have a child since I was tiny, and I’ve known it was my calling that long too”
— Scout Barbour-Evans
The new father, a student at Otago Polytech who ran for Mayor of the South Island city of Dunedin in 2016 when they were just 21, told New Zealand outlet Stuff that they gave birth at home, like they “so desperately wanted” to.
Their daughter came into the world after 10 hours of labour, which Barbour-Evans said 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.”
They have dreamed of being a father practically their whole life, they said earlier this year on New Zealand site The Spinoff, writing: “I’ve desperately wanted to have a child since I was tiny, and I’ve known it was my calling that long too.”
Scout Barbour-Evans announced the birth of their new daughter with this festive image (scoutriver/twitter)
The dad, who will breastfeed their daughter, said last month that placing their transition on hold for the pregnancy 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,” they explained.
Barbour-Evans, whose child will call them ‘pāpā,’ also made it clear that they did not see gender as neutral, and would not be raising their daughter to see it that way either.
“I don’t like the word neutral to describe my gender,” they said, adding that people could become aggressive and even violent when asked to use unusual pronouns.
“I don’t want to expose my child to that in any way.”
Transgender fathers like Scout Barbour-Evans are getting more common
Barriers are being broken every year when it comes to transgender men feeling physically and culturally able to give birth.
In 2017, a 30-year old trans man from Winconsin called Kaci Sullivan made history by becoming the first person to give birth both before and after transitioning.
He gave birth to his second child, Phoenix, six years after his first child, Grayson, was born in 2011—prior to his transition.
Sullivan later said that he preferred being pregnant while presenting as male, despite the harassment and abuse he faced.
Last year also saw the first recorded cases of trans men giving birth in Britain, with Scott Parker, 23, welcoming his daughter Sara into the world on April 29, before 21-year-old Hayden Cross gave birth to Trinity-Leigh less than two months later.
And earlier this year, it was revealed that a baby born to a transgender dad could become the first child in Britain to have no legal mother.
