Daddy’s Got Eggs: My Trans Fertility Journey (So Far)

by kylo freeman // as told to riese bernard

Growing up, I never really thought about having kids. There are so many things about me that led me to disconnect from that whole mental concept, like being queer and eventually realizing I was trans. I didn’t have any role models for any of this. The only gay parents I knew about were Bette and Tina.

I did end up getting pregnant when I was 18 — the condom broke, and even the morning-after pill couldn’t stop what was in motion, apparently. I knew immediately I didn’t want to keep it, and then I ended up having a miscarriage. My boyfriend was devastated. He was quite religious and very emotional about it and I just did not give a fuck. I think he wanted me to have it. I thought that was insane. I was 18 years old! I didn’t know myself or what was going on. I certainly had no idea who I was going to turn out to be.

When my first ever girlfriend asked me if I wanted children, I said no, I didn’t think so. Then I fell in love with my now-fiancee Em, and she is very bullish on children. She’s always wanted to have kids. It’s not like she held me down and forced me to consider parenthood, but our connection opened a door for me towards a future I hadn’t considered before.

Em makes me feel like a good person, you know? Before this relationship, I doubted myself. The chaos of my untherapized, pre-transition twenties had left its scars. And my Dad was such a cunt. He left a lot to be desired as a parent and as a partner to my Mum. So before coming out to myself as trans, when I thought about parenthood, there was just this gaping void. Nothing about being a mother felt right for me, and when I thought about fatherhood, I thought about him.

So now I’m a man, and I’m with Em, and Em tells me all the time that I’d be a great Dad. So it’s shifted in my mind from something I fear to something I want to grow into, a cycle of intergenerational trauma that I want to break. My Dad really wanted a son and was super intense about it, like he was Henry VIII or something, storming out of the hospital after they told him that I was a girl. I think about that a lot, about how I could be a supportive, safe space for a baby like me, a baby of any gender. I could right that wrong myself. That feels really cool.

Em and I want to have two kids; one with my eggs and one with hers. I feel extremely dysphoric when I think about being pregnant myself. A baby coming out of my vagina? Like, just shoot me. I know that a lot of trans guys feel differently about pregnancy and childbirth, but for me personally it is not something I could handle. So Em would be carrying both kids, which means at some point, we’d need to get my eggs out of my body. At 36, I’m already considered “geriatric” in pregnancy years, but that wasn’t the only reason to fast-track the process.

I had top surgery two years ago, but I hadn’t started taking testosterone yet, and only recently decided to go forward with it. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I’ve agonized over it a lot — are the ways that it’ll affirm me more important the ways it could impact my health or change me emotionally? Am I changing for society, or for myself? I have been overthinking this for a really long time, and as I felt more and more ready it felt like okay, it’s time to freeze the eggs.

Because I’m transitioning, my primary care provider ticked the infertility box for me that makes the whole procedure, which we did at the NYU Langone Fertility Center, 90% covered by insurance. 

At the first appointment they do a bunch of blood tests to check various hormone levels, like your anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) and estrogen, which give them some idea of your overall fertility and what you’ll need, in terms of medications, during the process. Usually they also do a vaginal ultrasound to check antral follicle count and ovarian reserve, but my bottom dysphoria is horrifically bad and I simply could not do that.

So they did all my scans on the outside, which meant the results were less precise, but because I’d been pregnant before and my Estradiol 2 and AMH levels were in the right range (25 and 3.24, respectively), we could still be confident that I’d get good results.

It was really helpful to remember I was doing this for my family, and that I had this testosterone goal on the other side. Even though this particular stage of my plan for my future was dysphoric and uncomfortable, it was part of an overall plan for gender affirmation and comfort.

When your period starts, you call the clinic and go in for an appointment, at which point you’re loaded up with shots, tailored to your body’s specific needs. I’m good with needles and disciplined, regimented schedules, so that helped.

Days 1-5: Oral Medication, 2 shots per day
Days 5-7: 2 shots per day
Days 8-10: 3 shots per day (1 morning + 2 evening)
Day 11; 1 shot (evening)
Trigger day: 2 shots (2 syringes each = 4 total injections)

You also have to go into the office every three days for lab draws and ultrasounds, to check your progress. There was something vaguely dystopian about those waiting rooms, all of these professional women with their laptops, on calls, waiting to freeze their eggs. There was not a single boyfriend or husband in sight during my visits. I think I read to people as a boy, so everybody was looking at me like, “wow, what a good man you are, being here for your partner while she freezes her eggs.” Gender affirmation comes from surprising places!

The last shots are the trigger shots that trigger ovulation, timed to line up with your retrieval appointment. I have high estrogen levels to begin with and you watch them getting higher every time you go in. My “peak” E2 level, on trigger day, was 4,251, 170x my baseline. I’d look at a puppy on the street and just start to cry. Physically — I felt bloated, but not too dysphoric overall.

When I took the trigger shot —I did a Lupron trigger rather than the traditional HCG due to my high estrogen levels and high anticipated egg count — my heart fluttered a bit, my throat felt weird. I used to get panic attacks a lot and thought this was one coming on, but I was able to self-regulate myself off that cliff. If something dangerous was happening, the symptoms would be worsening, not stabilizing. Everything was okay. (And it was! Everything was okay!)

I’m from the UK, and I’ve noticed that in the U.S, medical appointments are quite isolating. They lead you into the back and your partner isn’t with you when they start prepping you for surgery. For a while I was just in this random room alone, naked under my paper gown, my butt completely out, and they came in and told me the doctor was coming but I didn’t recognize the doctor’s name. I was like wait, where’s Dr. B? We have a rapport, I love her, where is she? Apparently it was her day off, so there was another doctor in to do my procedure. I was like, get me out of here! I’ve had quite enough! They were dead-naming me hard now ‘cause they had to make sure I was who I said I was before they knock me out. They had this light shining between my legs, my feet are in the stirrups. It was a nightmare. But then I was out cold.

I woke up in a lot of pain, looking at a nurse I’d never seen before in my life who was like, “do you wanna see how many eggs they got?” And she showed me a piece of paper —32 eggs. She said we don’t know how many are mature yet, but my doctor would call me tomorrow with more info. (My actual doctor!) My uterus was throbbing. But this is the U.S so they gave me some apple juice and painkillers and as soon as I could stand, I was out of there.

I ended up with 23 mature eggs, which is fantastic. Top tier. For my age, 5-10 is more typical, although it’s hard to know “typical” when so much of that data is from people who are doing egg retrievals due to fertility problems. I promised myself before that if we got more than ten, I wouldn’t do another round. So as soon as we got those results, I ordered my testosterone.

I was unprepared for how hard recovery would be, what it’s like for your elevated estrogen levels to crash. My stomach went from a little bloated to feeling like I was three months pregnant. You’re not allowed to exercise starting about two weeks before the surgery, and another two weeks after. Exercise is my outlet, it’s key to my mental health, so that contributed to this overall feeling that my body had become an uncontrollable thing and was no longer mine.

I felt lost and unmoored and exhausted, like my muscles were wasting away, like I was unattractive, like I was losing all the strength I’d built up in my mind and my limbs. Tasks that used to feel manageable felt overwhelming, even impossible. I’m not typically a depressed person. Em’s not used to seeing me like this. She pressed me to take time off work, to relax, to be patient with myself. I hated feeling so unproductive and scatter-brained. I wanted to exercise so bad!

Once you get your period, your body resets, hormonally. So for the first time in my life I was looking forward to my period. It came and I felt a lot better but it still took another two or three weeks after that to feel like I was back at my normal baseline.

If we had gotten less than ten eggs, I’m not sure I could’ve gone through that process all over again. I’m glad we’re in such a good position, and will probably have eggs left over for me to donate. I feel weirdly proud that I got so many eggs, which is embarrassing to admit because like, who cares? I didn’t do anything to get that, it’s just how my body is. With some of my straight girl friends going through fertility stuff, who are just getting a handful of eggs on their retrievals —I didn’t want to tell them my results.

It’s weird within my own relationship too. I’m a trans guy but naturally, my testosterone is crazy low, and I’m also super fertile, and Em is the exact opposite. She really wants to carry, and would love to be super fertile — but instead it’s me who has the abundance of eggs.

When we started the process, I was pretty focused on my testosterone, just getting through this to get to that. But even though the process was uncomfortable at best, and soul-crushing at worst, I found myself getting increasingly invested into the idea of having a child, like it started to feel real.

I think probably being a good man, a better man, a better man than my own father or than I once thought myself capable of becoming, will inevitably involve a lot of discomfort and even the occasional crushed soul. But there will always be something better on the other side, for me or for the people I love. It’s just about how you deal with it.

Sometimes I think about my little eggs in the freezer and I think, oh gosh. Maybe some of them have green eyes, maybe some of them have really high anxiety. Maybe they’re trans. What if there’s a little trans egg in there? I hope they’re doing okay.