AN obstetrician has declared the pregnancy of transgender man Thomas Beatie "normal" and says the baby he is carrying his healthy.
As Mr Beatie and his wife appeared on Oprah this morning, his doctor gave the first medical confirmation of the pregnancy, which has made headlines around the world.
Mr Beatie told TV host Oprah Winfrey he always wanted to have a child and considered his situation a miracle.
"It's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human desire," the thinly bearded dad-to-be said.
"I have a very stable male identity."
Pregnancy neither defined him nor made him feel feminine, he said.
Insemination:
Mr Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone treatments and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.
"I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day," he told Oprah. Mr Beatie's wife Nancy said she inseminated him with a syringe using sperm purchased from a bank.
Now six months pregnant, he said his size 32 jeans were getting a bit tight and his shirts were a bit stretched.
Nancy, to whom he has been married for five years and who has two grown daughters from a previous marriage, said the couple's roles would not change once the baby was born.
"He's going to be the father and I'm going to be the mother," she said. Their marriage is legal and he is recognised under state law as a man.
Daddy's little princess:
The couple was shown on video provided by People magazine, which collaborated with Oprah on the show, showing the room that will be the baby's nursery. Mr Beatie said the little girl was going to be "daddy's little princess".
The couple was also filmed in their hometown of Bend, Oregon, where he underwent an ultrasound showing the baby in his womb.
"I can't believe it. I can't believe she's inside me," Mr Beatie said while watching the ultrasound image. "We see her as our little miracle."
Normal pregnancy:
His obstetrician, Dr Kimberly James, who practices in the Oregon town, told Oprah: "This is a normal pregnancy."
She said Mr Beatie stopped taking testosterone two years ago and his levels of the hormone were normal.
"This baby is totally healthy," she said. "This is what I consider a normal pregnancy."
The couple said they had been turned down by a number of other doctors before Dr James agreed to take him as a patient.
The couple said an earlier attempt at pregnancy failed when he developed a tubal pregnancy, resulting in surgery.
The couple, who run a small business in Bend, said they decided to go public with the pregnancy because they wanted to control the way the news got out.
Hiding away:
"We're just going to have the baby now," Nancy said. "If we have to, we'll go hide."
She said the couple had some savings, while Mr Beatie is working on a book about his childhood, his mother's suicide and his life growing in Hawaii where, as a girl, he was a teen beauty pageant contestant and earned a martial arts black belt.
Oprah called the development "a new definition of what diversity means for everybody."
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The decision of Mr Beatie to have a child as a 34-year-old "transgender male" was criticised by some as "playing with fire", while others dismissed the photo as a hoax.
But this latest picture shows Mr Beatie as a muscular woman before his sex change, happily posing with his girlfriend Nancy in a skimpy bikini in 2000.
The second shows the couple in a wedding-style photograph taken in Honolulu in 2002.
In a first person piece entitled Labour of Love and published in The Advocate, a magazine with a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readership, Mr Beatie says his decision to have a child "has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals".
Even his own family members questioned him.
According to his article, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.
Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, 46, in Bend, Oregon.
The couple, who have been together 10 years, wanted to have children.
Mrs Beatie, however, was unable to conceive, having suffered severe endometriosis and undergone a hysterectomy, her husband writes.
So they decided Mr Beatie should try to carry a baby.
He stopped his bimonthly hormone injections and had his first period in eight years, he writes.
After a year - and nine doctors - he was able to get pregnant using frozen donor sperm but the pregnancy was ectopic and required surgery.
A second pregnancy, however, was successful and the couple's daughter is due on July 3, the article states.
Mr Beatie describes the process as a challenge, listing the reactions they received to a situation that "sparks legal, political and social unknowns".
The first doctor they approached "told me to shave my facial hair", Mr Beatie writes.
Others turned them away or referred them to a psychologist.
"Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy's family doesn't even know I'm transgender".
"How does it feel to be a pregnant man?" Mr Beatie writes in the article.
"Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.
"In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child.
"I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."
Media in Hawaii reported that before Mr Beatie became a man, he was a woman called Tracy Langondino.
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What is this poor child going to think?!? Daddy?
Mommy?
Scott/Randy420 says he has a man-gina & they used a turkey baster...
Makes me think of the song "I'm My Own Grandpa"....
I hope my head doesn't peel as it'll look like I have dandruff! 
I was wet, muddy & tired too. It was going to be an early night to bed. I could hear the nasty storm outside too. I didn't think it would every stop!
