I'm transgender and started my medical transition when my child was 11 months old. I'm a better parent because of it.

• I knew I wanted to medically transition but was putting it off, in part because I was chestfeeding.
• But after complications from my IUD placement, I stopped chestfeeding and started my transition.

When I got pregnant in March 2020, I was still trying to understand my gender. I knew I would eventually start medically transitioning via hormone-replacement therapy and was considering chest-masculinization surgery — or top surgery — but I was still worrying about what others would think. How would my relationship with my partner change? What would his parents think of someone like me raising their grandchild?

I felt trapped as a woman as I went through pregnancy and continued to feel that way through the 10 months I chose to chestfeed. Then, something happened that forced me to stop. About six months postpartum, I decided to get an IUD placed. I couldn't have known how drastically this small decision would change the trajectory of my transition.

A surgery complication ended up setting off a chain of events that helped me give myself permission to start my transition

I remember my doctor saying, "Don't worry, only one of my patients has ever had their IUD perforate their uterus." It turns out, I was her second patient to experience this. It not only perforated it but also went all the way through my uterine wall. I required laparoscopic surgery to get it removed.

With this unexpected surgery, I was given anesthesia and pain medication that I did not want to pass down to my child through milk and ended up discontinuing chestfeeding the day of my surgery. My anxiety told me this was the worst thing I could do, that I needed to continue giving everything I had for the sake of my baby's well-being.

This wasn't true. They were already eating three meals a day and drinking plenty of water, and I was able to transition them off my milk just fine, without even supplementing with formula. They were completely fine without chestfeeding.

That was the first time I realized that parenthood didn't need to be nonstop sacrificing. The thought of transitioning was becoming louder every day, and now I didn't have the excuse of chestfeeding to hold me back. When my child was 11 months old, on my 27th birthday, I took my first dose of testosterone.

Over this past year of transitioning, everything has shifted. It turned out, my relationship with my partner did change, drastically so. In thinking about how to be the best parents for our curious toddler, we decided to live separately. We also talked about polyamory and both started dating additional people; we feel hopeful of the possibilities this new path holds for our child, the potential for being raised by a community of people who love and care for them as parents. Becoming a parent pushed me to be unapologetic about what I needed from my relationships, and transitioning pushed me to be unapologetic about what I needed as an individual.

So much has changed in my life since then, and I've learned that my shame is not mine to hold

As a queer, trans, and disabled person, I've spent years trying to hide from shame, and I'm still working to understand that it's something placed onto me by others. I am not what many think of when they imagine the perfect parent; those people often arrive at judgments about how my identity influences the health of my child, but those conclusions don't have anything to do with my relationship with my child.

During my pregnancy and first year of having an infant, I really let the judgment of others affect me. Eventually, I reached out to a therapist who shared many of the identities that I felt so much shame around. Through talking with him every week and finding friends with similar experiences, I've been able to work through some of these feelings. I've realized that what I am often experiencing is an internalization of the hateful messages and transphobia in Westernized culture.

I also learned how to find the source of these feelings. For example, I can trace the shame of using government-funded food programs to the food scarcity I felt as a kid and the comments kids made when they found out I received free lunches and food from food pantries. The shame was never mine to begin with, and it's too heavy to hold.

I've built a community for myself by creating found family and setting boundaries

Finding resources created by parents like me has been so important, as has reading books where I can see transness represented in parenthood. Additionally, found family has gotten me through the worst of it all. As is the case for many people, I've spent the past few years largely interacting with folks online. When I started sharing my story of going through pregnancy and parenthood, I found many other queer and trans parents going through similar struggles.

Creating the family I want has also meant cutting off those in my life who aren't willing to respect boundaries and show up in ways that feel supportive. This has happened in a number of ways: I've had family members blatantly refuse to correctly gender me, disregard my parenting choices such as using gender-neutral language to refer to my child until they're capable of communicating their experience, and put me in unsafe situations near people who are harmful to me.

When I started intentionally cutting off those family members, I was made to feel bad for upholding those necessary boundaries. But now I know that not setting them causes harm to me.

I'm working on accepting the limits of what I can control

Still, I think about how living in a small, rural town may negatively affect my kid as they grow up and wonder sometimes whether we should move to nearby Portland, Oregon, which is more liberal. Already, I have been shouted at by teenagers for "looking gay" with my then-infant in my arms. I worry about how these small-town teachers will interact with me and whether their nervousness will show in how they care for my child, especially when I'm not around.

At this point, all I can do is advocate for myself and others and try to always choose the safest, best options for my family. Sometimes this means talking in a more traditionally masculine way as my voice deepens when I'm at the grocery store so I'm not as easily read as queer. Sometimes it means finding safe spaces around town where folks will be respectful and excited about our queer family, like the local library.

It's odd to be simultaneously validated as masculine and invalidated as the parent who grew and delivered my child. I move through the world now with almost accidental confidence, like I have something to prove. I sometimes wonder whether I get too defensive, whether my boundaries are inconvenient for others, or whether I am overprotective of my kid's right to self-expression.

At almost 2 years old, they are toilet-trained but haven't said any words. Family, friends, and medical professionals worry about their development, but I see a kid who is learning how to express themself despite the invisible social guidelines that aim to funnel their self-expression into a neat, docile box. Instead, they perfectly mimic the dog growling at a suspicious noise, and they exclaim the most satisfied "mmm" when we eat fresh melon together.

I know what it feels like to be raised in forced roles, and it's become a core value in my parenting to actively deconstruct them. I don't know yet how we will navigate school when it comes time, but I see so much eagerness and confidence in how they already move through the world and interact with others.

Ultimately, what I have learned is that owning my decision to transition will show my kid what it means to be authentic and liberated. It's taken time to pull apart what I'm willing to dedicate to their growth and what I save for myself, but when I am able to find moments of joy, they are right there smiling with me.