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The following account has been collected from various in-person and phone interviews leading up to the birth of Trystan and Biff’s son Leo. We visited Trystan and Biff at their home in Portland when Trystan was nine months pregnant - on his due date, in fact - to hear more about why they chose to share their story online, what it means to be a trans parent, and what the future holds for queer families like theirs. While a trans man carrying a child is by no means a medical miracle, and Trystan is certainly not the first to do so in the public eye - think Thomas Beatie on Oprah in 2008 - their story has still attracted attention, both negative and positive. After Trystan got pregnant, the couple made the decision to share part of their journey online, but they did not plan on their story going viral. Trystan, a 34-year-old trans man, would carry the couple's first biological child. Recently, Trystan and Biff began to discuss the idea of expanding their family. The kids call Trystan “Daddy” and Biff “Dada.” Their day-to-day lives are, for the most part, textbook ordinary - school, work, playdates, grocery-store run, repeat. That was a surprise that people were so blown away - so positively and so negatively."įor the past four years, Trystan Reese has lived in Portland, Oregon, with his husband, Biff Chaplow and their two adopted children (Chaplow's biological niece and nephew). For most people in this world, they don't live in the sphere of reality where transgender men have babies. "But we forgot, truly, how divided this country is and how many spheres of reality there are. "It's not a special story," Reese laughs, recalling how many transgender fathers he knows. The experience sparked a lot of questions from the general public, but Reese and Chaplow point out that their journey isn't unheard of. In 2017, they opened a new chapter in their story when Reese became pregnant and gave birth to their son, Leo.
![biff chaplow biff chaplow](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/c1/45/19c145f0030de1f21b1c827c4193396a.png)
The duo decided to share their lives as queer parents online via their website, Biff and I, and their Instagram. Their unlikely path in parenthood was just beginning, however. Their story rippled across the internet by way of the popular parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time. Riley was 3 years old and Hailey was 1 year old at the time - they are now 10 and 7 - and once the papers were signed, Chaplow and Reese famously became " accidental gay parents." While this call to parenting may sound atypical in how unpredictable it was, that's because it truly was: Chaplow and Reese - a cisgender gay man and transgender gay man, respectively - had only been dating for a year before they adopted Chaplow's sister's children to protect them from entering the foster system. "Is this the right path for us? Am I going to be happy on this path? I kept expecting people to say, 'What? You can't be parents!' And all we got was support." "It's similar in that there's a lot of self-doubt," he says. "You get to a point, usually long after it happens, where you realize, 'I am a parent.'"
![biff chaplow biff chaplow](https://static.ok.co.uk/media/images/600x400_ct/1010323_this_morning_pregnant_dad_eb9d92cbd82202bf64d2738047e7d998.jpg)
"It's a slow process - and you kind of know it's coming," Chaplow explains to POPSUGAR. For Biff Chaplow and Trystan Reese, becoming parents was a lot like coming out.