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I recently lost a pregnancy. I know I’m not a cis female but lately it’s made my issues with that get out of control. Could I be trans or could the increased hatred of my body be from pregnancy loss?

2 Answers
Last Updated: 03/01/2022 at 8:12pm
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Top Rated Answers
Aayla
- Expert in LGBTQ+ Issues
June 17th, 2019 12:30pm
Surely your experience had an impact on how you feel about your body. However, given what you say, it seems that you knew before this experience that you were not a cis woman, and after what happened your feelings only became stronger and harder to bear. If your awareness of not being cis was there before, chances are that you are actually trans. But you have a lot of mixed and intense feelings in your mind right now, probably a therapist would be of help in sorting them out and helping you cope with what happened. After you have coped and elaborated your experience, you'll be able to see more clearly through your feelings, and deal with your gender identity without being conditioned by other factors. If you really are trans, as your words suggest, you might want to deal with one thing at a time and elaborate your loss, so after that you can focus with a clearer mind on who you are and what your path will be.
Blynng
March 1st, 2022 8:12pm
First of all, I'm sorry to hear about the difficulty you are facing with having lost a pregnancy. Secondly, you stated you're not cisgender female. By general definition, if you're not cis, you're trans. Being transgender does NOT mean, however, that a person wants to change their sex expression nor does it mean they are "a woman who wants to be a man" or vice versa. Transgender, in the modern day, encompasses any gender identity that is not cisgender, so this can also apply to being non-binary, genderfluid, agender, multi-gender, etc. This is not always intuitively understood by people but it is the general acceptance within the queer community. Thirdly, could the pregnancy loss be contributing to feelings of body dysmorphia, gender dysmorphia, gender identity issues, etc? Absolutely, but I would hesitate to assume that it is affirming to your being a man if you did not previously consider yourself a man. One of the most difficult parts of pregnancy loss, other than the loss in itself of course, is the fact that the body produces a TON of hormones when attempting to maintain a pregnancy. Some of these hormones are counterbalancing to estrogen, some may trigger higher levels of testosterone, and depending on the potential causes for the loss (such as if you have PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, etc), these medical problems can also increase the production of hormones like testosterone, often in unpredictable ways. Pregnancy in humans is "designed" to last officially 10 months and each stage of that gestation comes with varying levels of hormones and body changes. When a loss occurs, you may lose the pregnancy, but the hormones don't just disappear. Most sex hormones are stored in body fat, and they are higher than average during pregnancy because they are needed to maintain and support the pregnancy... So when you lose one, you're left with higher than normal levels and nothing for them to apply to/nowhere for them to go! This often leaves the individual feeling like they are in a combination of PMS from hell with a heavy dose of postpartum depression. Postpartum depression can be significantly devastating for an individual; one of the most significant combating factors for it is the actual birth and the typically positive, affirming experience of having the child in your arms. Unfortunately, some people do not have a positive experience in this way, which is what typically leads to the diagnosis of postpartum depression (the negative feels overwhelm any good feels), but even tougher, people in your situation have no option or possibility of experiencing this natural offset. Anyway. It sounds to me like you need to get yourself into therapy ASAP and perhaps need the support of medication in the short term. If you were already experiencing body/gender dysmorphia prior to the pregnancy, it is likely unrelated and simply made worse by the experience. Without knowing your background, it's not really possible to say that you're even transgender, because many, many biological women hate their body for the experiences they have because of their uterus or other parts of being AFAB... Sometimes this is severe insecurity and dysmorphia, and sometimes it is something more serious such as CPTSD/trauma. There's even the possibility that you've been living with a medical or psychological condition wholly unrelated to your gender expression that, due to its impact on your hormones and the way you experience life, has led you to this feeling of ambiguity in your own skin. I hope you will take my recommendation to obtain help seriously. It is a very difficult situation, I know, but sometimes finding a trusted stranger to reveal all the secrets you've been harboring in your head to ends up resolving a great chunk of issues... Sometimes it leads us to discover things we were denying or struggling to recognize. Perhaps you're dealing with feelings about the pregnancy that aren't things you're ready to face quite yet... but regardless of the root reason for your unhappiness and sorrow, there is no shame in obtaining help. Oftentimes, doing so is absolutely necessary. There's no real purpose in making yourself suffer for longer with less support if you have the ability to provide yourself the outlet... Even if it's establishing with a listener on here and exploring what you have to say when all pretense is dropped, you don't have to force your way through the suffering alone.