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The Baby Book: Reflections on guilt from a trans parent

Guilt is something which has always followed me, as a parent, as a partner, as a trans person. I feel torn in more directions that I can ever take.

“What do you want me to do with the baby book?” my partner asked me as we were clearing out for our house move. We were used to moving house, but this time felt different for me. I had started my medical transition while living in this house, so strewn throughout our muddled histories, stuffed carelessly into drawers and boxes, were names and photos of a person I no longer recognised as me. The baby book though, this was a conversation we’d had before. 

A huge red book filled with photos of the body I had hated, from the first year of my child’s life. I had come out around a year after he was born and the book had gathered dust ever since. I would have been perfectly content to throw the thing straight in the bin, but I knew I couldn’t, and so I avoided the topic every time it came up. But not this time. Now it was crunch time and I had to live my truth.

“I’m sorry” I said, “but I can’t look at those photos, and I can’t stand the thought of the kids seeing them either.” I waited, breath held fast, heart beating, for what felt like far too long. But of course, my partner reassured me it was fine, before binning every photo with me in it. I could tell it hurt, ripping away those photos of our child’s birth and first year. Ripping away the person she fell in love with. And I still carry that guilt.

Guilt is something which has always followed me, as a parent, as a partner, as a trans person. I feel torn in more directions that I can ever take. My youngest child was too young to remember a time before I was daddy, but my eldest was almost ten when I came out.

We now live in a home where my teenager can make covert jokes about my transness, but we all hide the old photos. I am afraid to spend time around the house without a binder, lest I give myself away to my child. I feel guilty about keeping secrets, and guilt about not being an out and proud trans person, guilt about not giving my children better trans representation. But I live in a small rural village, and don’t feel safe or comfortable to be that out. I tell myself over and over again, I’ll have the conversation when the time is right. 

The truth is, I have no idea when the time will be right, and I question having left it as long as I have. I’m so desperate to give my kids a normal life that I’ve denied my own right to exist. But there isn’t a guide book on “coming out to your kid as trans: an introduction to shattering the narrative of their very existence”. Perhaps I hold onto those first few months of cringing while my son called me mum as I was just starting to pass. Or perhaps I hold onto the pride I feel at being the dad I always wanted to be. Perhaps I’m a coward, or perhaps I’m ashamed of the lie in the first place. 

There’s a poem by Phillip Larkin which goes:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

I think about that poem a lot, and about which road leads to the lesser evil. Which version of fucked up will I make my children, I wonder as I lie awake at night, the guilt gnawing at me from the inside. Then I wake up and go about my double life, researching trans issues by day, and denying them by night. 

I’ve been dipping my toes into being a part of a community, into embracing my transness and advocating for my right to be here. I feel like I want to be prepared for when the conversation comes, surrounded by information and support, shield up around us to minimise the “fucking up”. But as much as I look, I can’t find what I’m searching for. I want to hear stories like mine, hear the reassurance that we can survive the truth, that there is an after where I’m still just daddy. So I wanted to share my story, to let other people know they’re not alone, and to ask for more parents to share their experiences. To write the narrative and design the representation. 

Or perhaps, I just need to be brave. 

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