The importance of growing up in a supportive and
caring family can never be overstated. I mean, your early life forms the basis
of pretty much everything in your later life, and so having a nurturing family,
no matter how unconventional or otherwise, they may be, is invaluable.
Now, Bianca and Nick Bowser may seem like any other
ordinary married couple. I mean, they have two children whom they adore and are
the picture of a happy, loving and typical family.
Except they’re not so typical – Bianca and Nick are
both transgender and will one day have to tell their two sons that it was their
father, rather than their mother, who gave birth to them. And that’s not the
extent of it – they will then have to learn that it was their mother who
impregnated their father.
The couple, who are from Kentucky,
married back in 2011 and say that they have no intentions of hiding their
identities from their sons, Kai, six, and Pax, four.
“I mean, that’s when we tell them
sometimes men have babies, and sometimes mommies can’t have babies,” Nick told
ABC News. “We’re telling them the truth, and I think that’s the most important
thing, and in a way that they can understand.”
Bianca, who is completely in sync
with her husband’s views on the matter, says: “It’s always something that I have
looked forward to, telling our children. It’s nothing we are ashamed of so I
have no dread telling our children where we came from or how we previously
lived our lives.”
“We will tell them when they are
ready when they start asking questions about me being pregnant and about the
old family pictures they may see of me dressed as a girl and Bianca as a boy,”
Nick added.
“As they get older they will
understand more. We feel being honest with them from an early age will preserve
the relationship we currently have with them.”
The pair both grew up feeling different and eventually
realized it was because they were living as the wrong gender.
Both Bianca and Nick knew from a very young age that
their true gender didn’t match with the one they were raised in.
“At five, there was a moment when I was playing with
other classmates that I felt different,” Bianca recalled. “I didn’t fit in with
other boys. I didn’t like sports or masculine games. I had a really hard time
growing up.”
Over a decade ago, Bianca started transitioning so
that she could finally live as a woman. And in 2003, the mom-of-two underwent
breast augmentation and laser hair removal. Because she’d had no reconstructive
surgery, she was able to impregnate her husband.
Nick began living as a man soon after he turned 20. He
also didn’t have the easiest time growing up as he felt sure he was supposed to
live life as a man but was treated by everyone as though he were a girl.
“I first came out as a lesbian at 17 and I thought
that solved my problems. As a child, I wanted to dress as a boy and do boys
things but I wasn’t able to. I thought all lesbians thought the same as I did,”
he explained.
“It wasn’t until I was 20 that I discovered I could change my sex and be comfortable with who I was. I met transgender people and I finally figured out what would make me happy, which was not being a lesbian but being a guy.”
Nick also did not undergo surgery to modify his reproductive organs and so was able to fall pregnant with their sons after meeting Bianca in 2009 and deciding to start a family.
“Being pregnant was extremely difficult for me,” he recalled. “I don’t regret the decision to carry the children but at the same time, my brain and body were fighting. My body had turned into the ultimate version of female and my brain was telling me, ‘you’re not female, you’re male’. When I looked in the mirror, it was a constant battle for the nine months I was pregnant each time.”
It’s pretty incredible that despite how unconventional a couple Bianca and Nick Bowser are, they were able to realize their dream of starting a family with very few complications.
We wish the Bowser family all the luck in the world and hope that prejudice directed at families like theirs will, one day, become a thing of the past.
