What Being a Trans Birthing Parent Taught Me about God | Monday Invocation
“Since then, these two moments in my life have become integrated into who I am as a trans person and as a Christian, radically shifting how I experience and perceive my own embodiment…”
QCF is excited to continue expanding our QCF Parent & Family ministries to offer resources and programming for LGBTQ+ parents, celebrating the diverse ways that families are represented and embodied within the LGBTQ+ community. We are blessed to witness the beautiful and expansive variety in how many within our community define family and engage in parenthood. We get to hear about the unique challenges and joys that these topics bring to people’s everyday lives, and we want to share those experiences and reflections with you!
Over the coming weeks you will hear from a handful of LGBTQ+ Christians as they share their experiences and reflections with the wider community. Although we cannot share stories from every perspective, identity, or family experience in just a few short weeks, we are excited to share these stories now and hope to share more for years to come! Today, QCF’s Program & Development Director, Mick Atencio, reflects on how being a trans birthing parent taught them about God.
CW: Pregnancy & Birth
Two hands holding and sueezing the other while the birthing parent is navigating labor and birth.
In January 2024, I received the gift of undergoing gender affirming top surgery. After a dozen or so years of dysphoria affecting my embodied experience, I was able to look at my chest for the first time after surgery. I felt like me. This new freedom opened a window into a new possibility I hadn’t considered for many years. That summer, I made the prayerful decision that I was willing to try to get pregnant and give birth.
I got pregnant within two months. Pregnancy was not a pleasant experience (to say the least). I felt nauseous and exhausted all the time, experienced dysphoria during medical visits and when going clothes shopping, and the heartburn was unreal! It took a lot of mental energy and effort to correct people when they called me “mama” (my parent name is “poppy”), and sometimes, I felt anxious about whether or not I’d made the right decision.
Because of my trans identity and my neurodivergence, I wanted to avoid a hospital birth inevitably filled with too-bright lights, misgendering by doctors and nurses, and unnecessary medical interventions. I initially hoped to give birth at a birth center but I was deemed too high risk for the center near me. Through the advice of my queer doula, I found a queer midwife offering gender-affirming home birth services. This turned out to be the biggest blessing of my birth experience—every single person present at my labor was queer!
Giving birth was a wholly transformational experience. Pregnancy and birth were so difficult, and yet they taught me how my trans identity is so deeply woven into my faith. For me, becoming a trans birth-giver went beyond normative ways of living in order to co-create life, even through change and pain, just like God does for us through incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and indwelling via God’s Holy Spirit.
After I gave birth, I recognized a clear link between that experience and my top surgery just 18 months prior. Since then, these two moments in my life have become integrated into who I am as a trans person and as a Christian, radically shifting how I experience and perceive my own embodiment:
I’m able to more deeply feel and acknowledge the beauty of co-creation with God.
I’ve learned more about the incredible things my body can do!
The poetry I found myself writing before and after both top surgery and birth was deeply prayerful and meditative—I felt so connected to God and to my inner self.
Both experiences, while very physically painful and emotionally demanding, brought new joy into my life!
After a week of prodromal labor, 12ish hours in active labor, and 4 hours of pushing, my baby was born at home to the instrumental song “Holding the Contradiction” by The Brilliance. It’s a perfect reminder to me that I can hold my own story in this beautiful tension. Queer birth is beautiful. Queer faith is beautiful. And queer hope, even amid change and pain, transforms the world.
The work of creating radical belonging for LGBTQ+ Christians is only possible because of people like you. Your gift helps us sustain the Community Groups and resources that make this ministry a home for so many. If this content has meant something to you, consider making a donation today — every contribution makes a difference.
