EXCLUSIVE NEWS

 Pregnant man splits from wife

 By Wendy Carpenter 

 

The Upshot –Thomas Beatie, who made headlines in 2008 as the only legally recognized man known to have given birth, has separated from his wife of nine years, according to People magazine.

Beatie, who has had three children with wife Nancy, announced the split during a taping of the CBS syndicated show "The Doctors."


"Like all marriages, we have our ups and downs, and we're going through a rough patch right now," the 38-year-old Beattie said on the show, which will air May 7. "At the moment, we're separated."

Beatie also revealed that he's had the final female-to-male gender reassignment surgery.

Thomas Beatie, his wife Nancy and daughter Susan on Dec. 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Hermann J. …
"Nancy hasn't seen the new me yet," said Beatie, who started the sex-reassignment surgeries in 2002.
The couple wed in 2003 in Hawaii, and Beatie gave birth to their first child, Susan, in July 2008. Since then, he has given birth to two sons, Austin and Jensen. All three children were conceived through artificial insemination from a sperm donor.

The entire family, who lives in Bend, Ore., appeared on another episode of "The Doctors" in October, during which time Beatie revealed he was considering a hysterectomy, according to People.

He also discussed how people have reacted to the transgendered dad and his family, and detailed the medical complications from years of hormone treatments.

Beatie was born in Hawaii as Tracy Lagondino in 1974. He was a Girl Scout, model, and finalist in a Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant before he began to dress and live as a man in his 20s, he told People. He had sex-reassignment surgery in 2002, took twice-weekly doses of testosterone, and had his breasts surgically removed during his female-to-male transition before legally changing his gender on his passport and Hawaii driver's license.

In 2003, he legally married Nancy, a divorced mother of two who had had a hysterectomy due to endometriosis.
Despite his legal male status, Beatie left his female reproductive organs in place, and had never undergone "bottom" surgery, known as phalloplasty, to create an artificial penis — until now.

Beatie made world-wide headlines in 2007 when pictures of him pregnant with a beard went public, before he officially announced in April 2008 on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and in an interview with People that he was expecting a child while legally living as a man.

"If Nancy could get pregnant, I wouldn't be doing this," Beatie told People at the time. "Who hires a surrogate if they are perfectly capable of carrying their own child?"

That same month, Beatie wrote a first-person piece on his experience as the world's first pregnant man in "The Advocate," saying "Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Health care professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognize Nancy as my wife."

It's unclear if the couple will divorce, though the International Business Times reports that "more information will be revealed" when the interview airs next month.