Lately, I have struggled to feel excited and comfortable with the idea and experience of being pregnant. I have felt like the more visibly pregnant I get, the more invisible my nonbinary identity becomes, both to myself and others.
Recently, someone in one of the online groups I am a part of stated something similar to what I have written below and it resonated a lot with me. I wanted to put these thoughts into words so I can remind myself of them as often as I need to in the upcoming months. Hopefully they will resonate with others as well.
I identify as nonbinary. Regardless of how society views me, I am the only one who gets to decide how I identify.
My body is my own. It is the body of a nonbinary person. Regardless of how society views my body, this means my body is a nonbinary body.
For me, the experience of being pregnant and gestating a child, something that my nonbinary body is able to do, is a nonbinary experience. I cannot separate these experiences from my own identity, nor should I have to.
For most people, being pregnant is a female experience because they are female. But for me, it is a nonbinary experience. For a trans man, it would be a male experience. Not all people who get pregnant are women and the ability to get pregnant is not required in order to be considered a woman.
If everything goes well, I will get to be a parent, a mother. For me, parenting will be a nonbinary experience. All the aspects of parenting that are typically associated with motherhood will be nonbinary experiences. Motherhood will be a nonbinary experience.
My ability to have these experiences does not diminish or negate my identity as a nonbinary person. Nor should my ability to have these experiences as a nonbinary person diminish anyone else’s identity as a woman.
No matter what society tells me, and even if all the people around me that relate to these experiences are women, my body is nonbinary because I am nonbinary, and therefore, my pregnancy is a nonbinary experience.