Trusted Information for Healthy Pregnancies
discrimination
The world’s SECOND pregnant man is due to give birth next month
Jan 26th
A transgender couple have revealed they are expecting their first baby in a month's time.
Scott Moore - thought to be only the second 'pregnant man' to go public - is due to give birth to a boy in February, with husband Thomas by his side.
The couple were both born girls and have undergone surgery to transform their sex.
Scott, 30, who is legally married to Thomas because he still has a female birth certificate, says he is eagerly looking forward to giving birth.
They have decided to call the child 'Miles'.
‘We know some people will criticize us but we are blissfully happy and not ashamed,’ Scott said.
The couple, from California, already have two children - Gregg, 12, and Logan, 10 - who Thomas had with a previous female partner.
The case is similar to that of Thomas Beatie, from Oregon, who made headlines around the world in 2008 when he gave birth to a girl.
Scott, who started out in life as a girl named Jessica, first realized he wanted to be a man when he hit puberty aged 11.
‘When I told my family they thought I was crazy but they gradually realized I was serious and allowed me to start taking male hormones when I was 16 years old,’ he said.
His parents paid £4,600 for Scott to have his 36DDD chest removed. However, he could not afford the gender surgery, so still has female organs.
Thomas, who used to be called Laura, had a hysterectomy and gender reassignment surgery last year.
They met in 2005 at a support group meeting for transgender men but lost touch – but saw each other again in 2007.
‘We knew we had to be together,’ Scott said. ‘Two months later I gave up my job to live with Thomas and the boys.
‘Now they call me “dad two”.’The couple, who live in a four-bedroom house, decided in December 2008 to try for a baby.
Scott was inseminated with the sperm of a male friend and fell pregnant in June 2009.
‘We were so happy we did what all gay men do when they get excited - we went shopping,’ Thomas said.
The couple have dismissed concerns that Miles might be teased at school, saying they are confident they can deal with it.
‘We've been through it already,’ Thomas said.
‘My son Logan was bullied but now he just says to teasers: “You may have a problem with my two dads but I don't so you're not hurting me”.’
Scott plans to have a natural birth at their local hospital. Their doctor and obstetrician have told the medics at the local hospital.
‘We didn't want everyone to be shocked when a man turns up to give birth,’ Scott said.‘We found it very difficult to get a doctor and midwife at first. It was hard when people didn't want to treat me.
‘No pregnant person should be denied healthcare just because they are a man.’
Thomas said: ‘We want to show the world that trans-families can be healthy, loving and nurturing.’
Source
Handling the Office Baby Boom
Jan 13th
A growing number of employers are facing boomlets in office fertility. The proportion of pregnant women who are in the labor force has been edging higher for most of the past three decades, and trend may be accelerating: 61% of expectant or new mothers were in the labor force in 2008, up from 56% to 57% in the preceding three years, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. For employers, that brings an array of challenges-from scheduling and planning around doctor appointments, childbirth and parental leave, to enlisting co-workers to step up and fill in for new parents.
Indeed, many companies don't handle pregnancy all that well. Women complain about being laid off shortly after they reveal their pregnancies, or being written off for promotions or demoted. Federal data suggest many expectant mothers encounter problems at work: a near-record 6,196 pregnancy-discrimination complaints were filed last year, up 11% from 5,587 in 2007 and just slightly below 2008's record high of 6,285, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says.
Some companies, though, are finding benefits from managing expectant employees. The nimbleness required to handle the multiple pregnancies in the short term, these businesses say, can give rise to cross-training and teamwork that deepen their bench of talent in the long term. Companies that deliberately try to retain new parents, through flexibility, child-care help or babies-at-work programs, say the policies lure women back early from maternity leave, foster loyalty and heighten their allure to skilled recruits.
Of course, getting hired at a company where a significant minority of your co-workers are pregnant can feel, for non-parents, like landing on a strange planet. When Josh Ashline, a single man in his twenties, was hired at Zutano, he was promptly invited to an office baby shower—his first. He had to ask his boss for help picking out a gift, says Mr. Ashline, who is 29. "It was a little strange."
Among other quirks, long lines form at the women's room, causing "extra delays with our pregnant crew," Mr. Belenky says. Office chatter centers on nutrition, sleep and doctor visits.
Multiple co-worker pregnancies can be a challenge for everyone. Coordinating staff meetings when all five participants "all have a doctor's appointment some time in the next three days can be difficult," says Denise Towne, Zutano's production manager. And even with all of Zutano's careful planning, nature doesn't always cooperate; some babies arrived early, while other expectant moms continued to trudge in to work every day well after their due dates.
When Ms. Towne's production assistant, Amber Finn, took maternity leave, Ms. Towne farmed parts of her job to other employees. One, a customer-service worker, learned production-reporting skills that later earned her a promotion, Ms. Towne says. All the cross-training "makes everyone more valuable."
Asking co-workers to fill in during others' leaves or doctor appointments can cause overload or resentment. Some employers hire temps to fill the gap, but most handle maternity leave like vacations or other kinds of disability leave, parceling out pieces of the absent worker's job to co-workers, re-assigning projects or putting them on hold. In the best cases, employees reciprocate by planning carefully for their absences, repaying co-workers for pinch-hitting, and making up missed work time whenever possible.
Focusing on objectives over face time and fostering good communication among co-workers have helped Words & Numbers weather its baby boom, Mr. Evans says. The company subsidizes an on-site child-care center; its toddler room is visible from a conference room through floor-to-ceiling windows, keeping family issues constantly on the radar screen.
Asked if his company is on a calendar year for financial-reporting purposes, Mr. Evans replies with a laugh, "We're on trimesters."
Borshoff, an Indianapolis marketing, communications and advertising agency that has had several waves of multiple pregnancies among its 42 employees, allows new moms or dads to bring infants to work for up to six months, says Susan Matthews, a principal in the firm. Participants take a temporary cut to 80% of full pay, on the assumption that infant care will distract them. New parents who work in an open area are given temporary offices if needed. And Borshoff sets ground rules for terminating babies-at-work setups if they disrupt the workplace.
Such policies are cheaper than offering a child-care center and, if set up properly, sharply reduce hurdles to new mothers' return-to-work, says Carla Moquin, president of Parents in the Workplace, Salt Lake City, a nonprofit advocacy and resource organization. Ms. Moquin, who keeps a database on the subject, says she knows of 150 U.S. employers that have babies-at-work programs.
Zutano is among them. Ms. Finn says knowing she could bring her baby to work contributed to her decision to return just six weeks after childbirth.
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