TRYSTAN Reese has short dark hair, a thick beard and a protruding belly that peeks out from the waistband of his trousers. It’s a baby bump — he is 35 weeks pregnant.

Trystan is a transgender man who has not undergone gender reassignment surgery. He and his partner Biff Chaplow, who live in Portland in the US, are preparing to welcome the child they conceived naturally.

The couple already have two children — they adopted Biff’s niece and nephew out of a troubled home — and shared their story on the popular parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time.

Here they explain what their pregnancy experience has been like.

On finding out they were pregnant:

Before the couple decided they wanted to fall pregnant, Trystan was taking testosterone, which meant he grew facial hair and stopped getting his period — but it came back after he stopped taking his hormones.

Trystan and Biff tried for months to fall pregnant but were having little luck.

“One morning I woke up and I felt really, really bad,” Trystan said on the podcast.

“Like I had a fever bad, like lying on the tiles of the bathroom floor because how cool they are — feels good on your face kind of bad.

“And I randomly grabbed one of the tests and it came back positive. And I was like ‘Oh my God, this is actually happening’. I had to go wake [Biff] up and I was like ‘Ah I’m pregnant.’

“He was a little bit sleepy but he was just like ‘I told you so.’ So that’s still, like, romantic. He said ‘I’m really excited to start planning for you. But like is it OK with you if I go back to sleep now?’”

On people’s reactions:

“There just hasn’t been an ounce of transphobia from anyone I have come in contact with,” Trystan said.

“I can feel someone looking at my face and searching for the remnants of womanhood.

“They kind of squint their eyes a little bit and I can tell they’re trying to take away my beard, they’re trying to de-transition me in their heads.

“Because it’s still freezing cold in Portland, I’m able to layer. So with like a chunky sweater, a long open coat, and then like a drapey scarf, you cannot tell at all.”

On the changes his body has experienced:

“It’s been really awesome. And that’s like not cool to say,” Trystan said.

“You’re supposed to, like, complain about your ankles or whatever. But I’ve been having a blast being pregnant,” he said of the pregnancy.

“Feeling the movements has been so cool. The kids every night will read stories to my belly. It’s just been really awesome.”

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On telling his Mum:

“I didn’t know what her response was going to be and I didn’t want to put her on the spot with the expectation that she was going to fawn and gush,” he said.

“I wrote like five or six drafts of the email just to make sure that I got it right. And she wrote back right away. ‘Congratulations I know you’re going to be great dads. There’s no reason why only screwed up people should have kids’.”

On telling his two kids, Riley and Hailey:

Riley was worried about what the other kids at school would say if they knew his Dad was pregnant.

“He tried to ask us if we would pretend like the baby was just our cousin that we were babysitting,” Trystan said.

“[For him] it’s literally like just anything to have this not be our baby that my dad gave birth to. So, you know, we’re happy to let him protect himself however he needs, but there is a limit. And pretending that this baby is not ours is where the line is drawn.”

But Hailey is super stoked that her Dad is pregnant.

“She has told everybody in her class that her dad is transgender and is having a baby and she’s going to be a big sister. So we’ve kind of gotten to see it play out,” Trystan said.