The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood

by Krys Malcolm Belc

Krys Malcolm Belc’s visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood—conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson—eventually clarified his gender identity.

As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. Giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity and allowed him to project a more masculine self. And yet, when his partner Anna adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.”

By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. The Natural Mother of the Child is a visual memoir-in-lyric-essays, an archive of Belc’s queerness. By engaging directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—Belc creates a new kind of life record, one that addresses his own ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own.

The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Parenting, Essays, Audiobook

287 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2021

Reviews

[Sage Agee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a trans nonbinary parent this book meant a whole lot <3

[Jellybean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this but it was very much not what I was expecting. I feel like a subtitle "essays on nonbinary being and parenting" is more accurate than "a memoir of nonbinary parenting" and would have better prepared my expectations. Because it is a collection of essays, there is no real narrative flow and the reader is taken all over the author's timeline, often within a single essay. In addition to feeling a lack of groundedness to time, place, and people, there was often an absence of emotional context and personal significance in the stories. I think this my partly be due to the personal nature of much of the material and the desire to protect the subjects he writes about. I wonder if it isn't also partly due to the history of trauma he mentions and writing about subjects that he is not emotionally prepared to disclose. There were moments of intense vulnerability that would poke through here and there and I almost felt like a voyeur at those times, as it felt like they were moments shared reluctantly. There were many essays I loved but many more where it didn't feel clear to me the core emotion or experience the author was trying to convey. He's had some unique experiences but, even in the most unique moments of our lives I feel we still often touch on themes universal to all of us. There were moments where he accomplished this, particularly when discussing his bond with his son Samson. Those moments were some of the most captivating and cherished moments I had with this text. I appreciate his voice and hope he will continue to grow his craft. He has important stories to tell and this book will serve as a valuable, less sensationalized point of reference and resonance for other transmasculine people considering becoming a "gestational parent."

Note: I received an ARC audiobook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

so beautifully done. simultaneously culturally essential and deeply personal - i'm so glad belc put his memoir out into the world.

belc is a trans man, and the gestational parent of one of the three kids he shares with his partner. i love how much this book fucks gender, complicates our ideas of motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, and twists around the concept of gender reveals. when the pregnant individual is trans, what does it mean to find out the baby's biological sex at an ultrasound? how meaningful can that information actually be, when we know that gender is subjective?

during the first part of belc's story i was THRILLED by all of this, and also so happy the book exists on a didactic level. this is a story that should be read by people who may be confused by belc's family - it's a learning opportunity.

but over the course of the book, my appreciation grew on a deeper level. i love belc's candor, how he talks about his fears, his hopes for his kids, the intense fatigue of parenthood, the daily battles and joys. i love that when belc writes in the second person, he's writing to his wife, anna. it's poetic and introspective. their beautiful lil family gives me a new, more hopeful perspective on raising kids and queer family building. it feels good to see evidence that you don't need to follow a conventional path, and there are all different types of queer fams.

[Callum McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir explores Belc’s experiences as a transmasculine nonbinary parent, with a particular focus on the shifting nature of identity, and the language we use to define ourselves.

Born biologically female, Belc was yet to undergo surgery or hormone replacement, but was living and presenting publicly as a man, when he decided to have a child via a sperm donor. There is such fascinating insight into the complexities of queer parenthood, with Belc both amazed and horrified by the changes he goes through. It was the disconnect between the wonderful bond he felt with his child and his discomfort with the bodily processes of carrying, birthing, and nursing a child that confirmed in Belc’s mind that he was indeed not a woman in any of the societally accepted ways. As soon as he finished breastfeeding (having had to reluctantly stop binding his chest), he began the formal process of taking testosterone.

Belc is also a parent to two other children, carried by his cis-female partner, Anna. He very much feels like the children’s dad – and is deeply uncomfortable with being called a mother, even to the child he birthed – and yet, heteronormativity is so widely accepted, that to tell people he is his son’s father feels like a denial of their physical bond. He is proud to have carried him, and doesn’t want to erase that history. It is here we see the importance of the words we use to label ourselves and each other – and how frustrating it can be when those labels don’t easily apply to our own lived realities.

This leads on nicely into some great commentary on the general difficulty that queer people face in being recognised as a parent to the children they don’t have a direct biological link to (having been carried by their partner instead). Despite using sperm donations and raising their children together, Belc and his partner are not listed on the birth certificates, or recognised legally as a parent to the children they didn’t carry themselves. This means they have to adopt each other’s offspring to have any recognised rights over them (they worry that if one of them were to die, the other would have no legal right to custody, despite having raised all of their children together from birth, for example). However, this process also means the children’s biological father – a family friend – must relinquish all rights to the children, something that Belc feels great remorse over.

Another interesting area explored is that of male rage. Once he has transitioned, Belc notes a marked difference in the way people – including his own partner and children – respond to him, especially when he is angry. Simply changing his outward appearance to present as a man is enough to make society instantly more fearful of him, which says a lot about how deep-rooted toxic masculinity has become.

As you can tell, there is a lot of depth and nuance to Belc’s situation, but it is presented in such an accessible way. What’s more, this complexity is beautifully counterbalanced by the simple act of loving his children, providing them with a happy home – as any parent aspires to – and an upbringing that encourages acceptance of difference.

A natural storyteller, Belc’s writing style is approachable, honest, and warm, often feeling like a heartfelt discussion with a friend. The essay-like structure, non-linear timeline, and shits between a first and second-person perspective can be a little jarring, however. Nonetheless, this fascinating read manages to capture so many of the struggles inherent to the trans/nonbinary experience, and the complicated ways in which they intersect with the joys of parenthood.

Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[R.J. Sorrento · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir hit me harder than I expected. As a genderfluid person always exploring my gender and as a parent of two children, this book spoke to me on an emotional level. I wept a few times while reading and the photo essay on page 252 in particular broke me.

I love LGBTQ+ fiction, but most it is YA and focuses on coming out and first loves. One of the things I love most about this memoir is the exploration and discussion of queer parenthood. I’m queer but I’m a parent, too, and everything I do is shaped by this. So it was very refreshing to read about Belc’s life experience and journey in raw and honest detail.

Belc’s memoir captures parenthood, what it means to carry a child and give birth without attaching gender and maternal labels to it. It’s also very informative regarding all the paperwork and persistence needed for adoptive parents as well.

There are struggles but also so much joy. I’m so glad I have a copy of this book to return to again and again. Makes me feel less alone as a queer parent without much of an IRL community.

Thank you Counterpoint Press for the gifted copy. Look for my Instagram review post next week.

[Deelee · Rating 4 out of 5]

While many elements of "Natural Mother of the Child" will be familiar to longtime readers of the transition memoir genre, The Natural Mother of the Child is a standout among its peers for the quality of the very fine writing and the author's refreshing lack of idealism, either about his transition, his pregnancy, or parenting.

I expected a lot more to be made of Belc's pregnancy, but Belc portrayal is ordinary in a way that made intuitive sense. His story is, essentially, we wanted another kid, my partner didn't want to have post-partum symptoms again, and I wanted one of our kids to be biologically connected to me and had the parts, so why not?

Pregnancy, for Belc, is understandably full of jarring dysphorias, such as the ballooning of his breasts and (a dysphoria-within-a-dysphoria) the new erotic relationship to them. By and large, though, being a dad-gendered baby-maker seems, for Belc, and those looking in at him, to be a whole lot like being, well, a dad.

The book doesn't explicitly make this connection, but I am struck by the familiarity of dysphoria in the context of a parenting memoir. That is to say, the dysphorias Belc records, at least insofar as those that are about his new, uneasy relationship to his own body, are a LOT like those the normative pregnant person, i.e. the "mom-to-be."

Many recent pregnancy memoirs and novels (by white women) write against the conventional narrative of (white) motherhood as some sort of angelic realization of female destiny, emphasizing, instead, the costs to the body, the mind, and identity. Off the top of my head, I can think of ten or twelve titles, ranging from eye-rolling to excellent, by Lydia Kiesling, Julia Fine, Maggie O'Farrell, Ariel Levy, Emily Adrian, Megan O'Connell, Sara Sligar, Helen Phillips, Maggie Nelson, I could go on!

Belc's memoir, while dissimilar in tone, style, and references, (with the exception of queers Levy and Nelson, the latter of whom "Natural Mother" references...a lot), is most interesting when read in the context of this other contemporary conversation. In a sense, Belc's memoir resides in the Venn overlap of America's preoccupation with and fantasy of white motherhood and America's preoccupation with and fantasy of the (white) transmasculine figure, whether as tormented youth or fully realized (or false, as per TERFs and evangelicals) white male.

There's are worthwhile questions to be asked about the commonalities between the archetypal white mother's dysphoria and that of the archetypal's transman's, of which Belc, in spite of his nonbinary identity, is a striking representation. Belc does approach these questions in a researched section focused on breasts as objects that exist in symbolic relationship to the individual marked as female. Quoting from various feminist critics and essayists, Belc records attitudes of pubescent cis girls to their altering forms and those of adult survivors of the earliest and most brutal mastectomies, as well as the "gender euphoria" of medically transitioning trans women as their bodies begin to feminize.

Belc is an able essayist, gracefully demonstrating the diversity of these attitudes--female identity is not one thing--while contrasting those with his own feelings towards his breasts and the breasts of others (his wife's, held in sleep; the woman whose recent mastectomy he guiltily covets). It's not so much that Belc's perspective is different, because, as the examples he quotes from show, women have a vast range of experiences within and to their physical and imagined bodies. Rather, it's that Belc doesn't identify with these women, or any women. Not really.

Therein begin my struggle with Belc's project. Belc, regardless of his gender identity, sees the world from a default male perspective--meaning from within a conventionally male value system, the universe of brothers and fathers, but also of qualities and interests that are only gendered by virtue of culture, such as anger or violence or even physical fitness and restraint of the body.

On these subjects, Belc is reliably self-interrogating--fearing his own aggression toward his restless infant, decrying and wondering at male violence and observing how much dark longing to hurt he seem to have inherited from his own violent father. Readers with conventional, American attitudes toward sex and gender roles may find Belc's anguish over his masculine inheritance moving, relatable, or reassuring, as it apparently raises the bar for (white) male accountability while portraying a transmasculine experience that is easy to translate precisely because it so closely resembles that bemoaned masculine ideal.

As many critics have pointed out, such contradictory notions are logically untenable and ideologically suspect. A male (or transmasculine) anguish over violence that regards violence as implicitly masculine is increasing the value of exactly that behavior over which it sheds tears.

Belc, who like many conventionally minded transmascs before them (those most likely to get publishing contracts, especially), reports never crying after going on testosterone and regards his childhood physical aggression as a feature of early male identity. Many trans men report the opposite effect and plenty of cis men cry often (crying itself is observably cultural--see, for example, stiff British lips and any number of Mexican pop songs about or by sobbing men) and that many girls, particularly those raised by violent, domineering fathers, throw kicks and punches with full-throated bloodlust and identify with their powerful fathers rather than their dominated mothers.

Belc doesn't mention other men's perspectives, though, trans or otherwise, and doesn't cite other trans critics' thoughts, except to acknowledge that Belc's perspective should not be considered representative. That's fair in context, but sits uncomfortably in a work that so frequently cites female writers on female identity. The lack of perspectives on masculinity from cultures that differ from his own and the tendency of Belc to evoke women's voices only as counterpoint ("I am not that") or, in the case of Maggie Nelson, external confirmation, undercuts the book's apparent larger aim of an outsider's inside view of capital-P Parenthood in the American family.

I believe there are people this book will speak to. Belc's expert prose and stoic narration makes a strong bid for Greatness, if such a thing would ever be afforded to either a pregnancy/parenting narrative or a trans author (no matter how masculine). I personally prefer my memoirs with a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater emphasis on the unknown than what Belc seems to be pursuing here, and have zero interest in men or white hetero-ish masculine identity (bleh) and a very low tolerance for uninterrogated trans shame (in which "Natural Mother" indulges too much). Still, what recent book has made me want to write an epic goodreads essay? That alone, I think, is testament to Belc's value in a larger cultural conversation. Something is cooking here that is, at the very least, worth consideration.

[Veronica Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of "The Natural Mother of the Child," Belc reflects on the fact that he "should have used the word uncommon when talking to [his son] about [their] relationship, instead of rare" because "Everyone came from someone." Nevertheless, Belc's chronicle of his experience as a transmasculine gestational parent is like nothing I've read before. Through an accumulation of clear-eyed, unsparing stories that span the past, present, and imagined future, Belc picks apart the normative knot that tangles the physical capacity for pregnancy with a range of cultural beliefs about gender and motherhood.

I came to this memoir expecting a critique of the way that medical establishments and government institutions interact with nonbinary parents, and that critique is certainly present, but for me the strength of "The Natural Mother of the Child" lies in Belc's reflections on his own changing internal landscape before, during, and after pregnancy. Indeed, adaptation and transformation define Belc's experience. His ambivalence about his pregnant body intersects with an appreciation for the close bond it creates with his son Samson; when he begins testosterone and people no longer see the contours of that bond written on his body, it feels like something of a loss. After Belc finds out Samson's sex during an ultrasound, he is jealous of the boyhood that he never got to have and the identity that he assumes Samson will easily inhabit. Later, this jealousy morphs into something more complicated as he watches Samson grow into a person that is softer and gentler than his two brothers (both carried by Belc's partner)—binary gender doesn't seem a good match for parent or son. I found myself continually surprised by the way the nuance of Belc's analysis exposed and undermined assumptions about gender and families that I didn't even know I was holding.

The stories that make up "The Natural Mother of the Child" are interspersed with institutional ephemera that chart Belc's changing identity, as well as baby pictures of Belc and his three sons. The sheer number of documents required by the state to legally acknowledge the reality of Belc's family is overwhelming; while I was initially unsure what the legal documents added to the narrative, by the end I was grateful for even this small glimpse of the time and resources required to build a family outside of society's rigid expectations. The structure of the memoir links Belc's internal experience to the demands of the public world, aptly illustrating the challenge of crafting an authentic identity in a society designed to keep people in boxes.

"The Natural Mother of the Child" is beautiful and thought-provoking, and I'm grateful for Belc's generosity in sharing his story. It's changed the way that I think about pregnancy and parenthood, but also gender more generally. Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for the ARC!

[Jessica Haider · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating, informative and emotional memoir about parenting a child as a nonbinary transmasculine parent. Krys Malcom Belc gave birth to his son Samson and that process helped them gain some clarity on his gender identity. It helped him determine he definitely did not identify with a female gender. He also shares the struggles of being a non-traditional couple and "adopting" a child a partner gave birth to. It was a maze of bureaucracy of almost nightmare proportion.

I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by the author and it was very well done.

I highly recommend this one to anyone interested in diversifying their reading. It is a great pick not only for getting an LGBTQ+ perspective but also on understanding parental rights.

Thank you to the publisher for the audiobook!

[literaryelise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, most of which I don’t even know how to articulate. I was incredibly excited to read it and unfortunately it did not live up to my expectations. I was rather alarmed by the author’s description of his anger, particularly when it was aimed at his children and wife. The way he spoke about and described many of the loved ones in his life really rubbed me the wrong way. The book makes constant time jumps that left me confused, especially since I listened to the audiobook. Though the prose was good, I just can’t recommend reading this book.

[Katelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stayed up until 3am reading this book. That is a sign of a compelling book. Belc discusses his parenting experiences as a trans man, including giving birth to his child and breastfeeding.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

d. Nearly a decade later people often ask why I married so young, and they are nearly always straight and cis and cannot possibly understand marriage as a protective act.
e. Queer folks who are not both genetic parents of their children must, in the United states, engage with the court system after their children are born to secure their parentage.
f. Because his date of birth was before the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage, Anna and I were not married in Pennsylvania, Samson's birth state, and could not be listed together on his original birth certificate. Instead, next to Father: was Information Not Recorded.

This might be the longest it's taken me to upload a review after finishing a book. It's just as well that composing it via longhand in a physical notebook has turned out to be quite the lifehack when it comes to getting the creative juices flowing from beginning to end, else I'd be quite upset at how much meditation I've lost in the past few days.

There are no stories of his life that could begin without me but many that could end that way.

My views of sexual reproduction as a trans man can be summarized as follows: if I had to choose between giving birth and dealing with a cancer recurrence, I would unhesitatingly choose the latter. Anyone who attempts to argue with me has no true idea of how much pregnancy can and will fuck up a body. To read this, then, is an exercise in embodiment of the similar yet different, as Krys Malcolm Belc explores his experiences with what is commonly termed a 'seahorse dad' in various communities and corners of the Internet. As the topic (re)becomes more fraught as the settler state remembers its roots, I am grateful to Belc's choice to daisy chain amorphous yet cogitative meditations in a recognizably teleological narrative, rather than set off in a linear A to B that I would've found easier to formulate a book report on but much harder to relate to.

His eyes flicker with recognition. It's good that your mom is the type of mom who let you wear dresses, even though you were a boy, he says. He likes when we have things in common.

Indeed, it was while reading this that I first started truly entertaining thoughts of writing my own book on my experiences of transitioning in the time of breast cancer. Similar are the myopically enforced genderings, silver lining degradation/euphorias (subpar top surgery, anyone? not to mention the estrogen suppressors. i am less Frankenstein's monster and more Frankenstein's glory by the day), and dance of the dead confabulations where language is rendered more than useless in the face of the concepts life wholesale extrapolates. In the aftermath, I hold to the proclamation that transitioning saved me life, something that Belc obliquely raises a glass too at certain late game points.

But I know you love the self I walked away from, the piece Samson took with him on the way out. Without him I never could have believed in myself enough to say yes. Yes to hormones, yes to finding out how to live.

As I stated above, childbirth can fuck you up bad, to the point that I believe anyone who is committed to it deserves free childcare, at the very least. To meditate on that as a man, as a trans man, alongside Belc was an honor and a privilege, and I must once again thank the serendipity of fate for granting me this reading experience at a time when it is most needed (I penned this review before starting my first week of radiation treatment, and it should tell you something that I only got around to uploading it after the week was through). The world may be growing sharp and full of terrors, but much as the law does not entail humanity, social conventions do not entail life. And if a queer family wants to give birth to three children in close succession, I will applaud their effort and join the village to raise them.

11. Same-sex marriage did not become legal in New Jersey until October 2013, but initially, the Deputy Registrar of Bergen County, New Jersey, accidentally issued us a marriage license.
a. She called us one morning a few weeks later to report her mistake. As I was falling asleep last night, she recounted, I realized something. The drawer where I keep the civil union licenses is on the one side, and the marriage licenses are on the other side, and, well, I reached in the wrong drawer.
I see, Anna said.
I am going to need you to send that back, she said.
I don't think so, Anna said.
Well, then you need to destroy it, at least, she said.
I will, Anna said, but we had it framed and hung it in our bathroom, above our college diplomas.
12. We were, the clerk later explained, her first civil union.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belc is a beautiful writer, and has taken an interesting approach to sharing his story of being a transmasculine parent to two children carried by his wife, and to one child whom he himself carried. The book addresses the experience of pregnancy for him (confusing, painful) and the experience for both him and for his son of being/having a father who was also a gestational host (beautiful - special for having this connection as gestational host and genetic match but also isolating.) Belc chooses to structure the discussion around things that in and of themselves are both prosaic and essential -- this is about the paperwork. Belc tells stories around his own birth certificate (which at least as of the writing of the book he had not yet changed to reflect his gender despite having gathered the documentation to do so), his son Samson's birth certificate (where he is listed as the natural mother of the child), the birth certificates of his two other sons whom he adopted after his wife gave birth and to whom he does not have a genetic relationship, his marriage certificate, photographs, and other corporeal indicia of who he is and who he has been perceived to be. It is a smart and surprising way to anchor his story. And this is Belc's story. I wanted a little more about his wife Anna, because it would help me better understand the family dynamic (Belc does talk about the ways in which the son he gave birth to his like him, and his other sons like their mother and sperm donor.) I absolutely get the reason to focus the story away from that larger family story, I think its a smart choice, I am just saying for me as a reader I had a lot of questions that left me from feeling like I was missing something, but that is me. Overall this is a really great portrait of a loving family (which includes Krys, his wife and their kids and also Krys' parents and siblings), and I highly recommend the read to anyone who wants to better understand one person's experience of gender and gender dysphoria and parenting as a transman.

I would like to be all rah rah, but I did have one major issue with the book. Belc falls back on this idea that certain behaviors are man things or women things. There is not one way to be a man or a woman, and for a book that is based on the premise that gender is nonbinary it was disappointing to see Belc focus on the manliness of his anger, violence, and impatience vs. the womanliness of his wife's peacefulness, level-headedness and friendliness. He can be any kind of man he wants to be, but his masculinity is not dictated by some archaic definition of gender.

[jess]

The Natural Mother of the Child is series of essays, exploring the experience of gestational parenthood and how it intersects with Krys Malcolm Belc's gender identity. This memoir is told in documents and snapshots, which is a style that doesn't work for everyone but I enjoy it. It feels a bit like flipping through a scrapbook with a friend, or learning about someone's life as your rifle through papers in a box on their desk. Krys Malcolm Belc is not self-conscious about meandering down memory lane with the reader. Even though his parenting experience might be different from your life experience, there is so much earnest humanity in these pages that you will feel like you made a friend along the way. Queer family building is so interesting and multifaceted, and there are so many details and complications. I thought Krys did a lovely job of dragging some of these things out of the shadows and working through his own questions and feelings in the process.

I listened to the audio book, which I received for free from the publisher via NetGalley. It was read by the author and I really enjoyed it. It made me want to hang out with Krys and hear more of his stories about his mom, his wife, his children and their antics. I also bought a hardcover copy with my own cashdollars so I could see the visual essay parts of the book.

[Sanjida · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been thinking a lot about gender and parenthood, which led me to this book. It's interesting and perhaps helpful to disconnect even pregnancy and breastfeeding from woman/motherhood - Krys can be a man and a dad who gave birth. Besides this, this collection is repetitive, and little is generally relatable. I wanted more sociology around what it means to be a dad versus a mom, but Krys can only give us his experiences in progress. And, since this is not fantasy, I was curious about where the the money for 30 yr olds to buy houses, and afford birthing centers and child supplies for 3 kids, came from? How did they do it? Why did they have kids so young? What about child care? And what does Anna think about all of this and that they clearly have different emotional relationships to all their children?

[Herbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so want to have a thoughtful response to this work but its frankly impossible to right now because I inhaled the text savagely in late night sessions, on stolen time. I devoured it with the hunger of someone who has fasted for a prolonged time. I lived this life; a transmasc pregnant person, a mythical creature created to dethrone women from their royal seat of reverence as fertile creators of life, if you ask certain terfs and midwives. The reality was much more mundane: appointments, books, microdramas in my mind about seats on buses and gendered language. This book lives in that mundane reality. The foreign country of gestation that people probably cannot imagine unless they’ve been there. And the preludes to gestation, and the aftermath of gestation (aka post partum).

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

C/W:pregnancy, anorexia, homophobia, transphobia

The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood was a well-written and thoughtful look at parenthood, gender, and families. This is one of those books where it's hard to explain just how much it meant to me. Belc's story was a lovely reminder that our self identities can change and there's no "right" timeline to figure these things out. It was also just really great to see another way that queer love and queer families can look. Belc's writing left me feeling like there were more options for what my future could look like than I'd even thought to imagine; this was a true gift in these times.

[Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars — content and style were delightful!! i wish there was a bit more reflection on the way Belc discussed Anna’s depression and medication for it, as someone on long-term antidepressants i felt uneasy with the way it was handled. the choppy essay-like style works well, although at times i wished for more connection between the sections and pages. but it all feels woven together well, nothing was confusing, and overall i really enjoyed it.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and heart-wrenchingly honest, Krys Belc details the story of carrying his child as a transmasc parent in the mid 2010s. Though we have progressed far in our understanding and mainstream acceptance of many facets of LGBT life, our society still struggles with rampant transphobia both in and out of the medical realm. Belc details his struggles with his own gender identity while carrying his own child as he watched his partner take care of their oldest son. His prose is gorgeous in the way that too many memoirs are not, and this was the book that finally made me understand why people love memoirs.

He is honest and raw when detailing the transphobia he faced both growing up and as a full adult, married with children and trying to navigate a world still callous to him, whether intentionally or not. His reflections on being called the natural mother of the child in all legal documents and struggle with doctors and everyday people alike struggling with the picture of someone visibly pregnant while transmasculine is exactly the kind of look into the pervasive and insidious ways transphobia infects every facet of life. For those who are gender nonconforming, you will resonate with much and some parts you'll find entirely foreign, just as every gender journey is unique. For cis people, particularly those that do not know and love trans people in close ways, this is a great way to become aware of the microaggressions we perpetuate and the impact of words that we take entirely for granted all too often.

Though Belc is absolutely not responsible for teaching cis people what it's like to be nonbinary and transmasc gestational parent in today's world, his poetic prose and honesty are a snapshot into his life that I am deeply honored to have experienced. Buy this for your nurse and doctor friends, the doulas and midwives you know, your book club that needs a bit of bubble-bursting. Tell your libraries to get this book. It'll make you more empathetic person, I hope. It'll stick with you and remind you that family is complicated, love is messy, and parents don't always know the right thing to do.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Molly Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Krys Belc’s experience as a parent is like none other I’ve encountered in print. I was drawn to this book as I recognized the author as former faculty at the university I work for. I realize now that he and I both had sons the same age at the same time, but our experiences were so vastly different, and as I was handing this calm, quiet individual his library books, he was grappling with issues I could have never imagined. This is candidly and courageously written, and the addition of photos, documents, and the braiding in of definitions and historical events added depth to the narrative. My only qualm is that the timeline bounced around a bit, and I often found myself wondering who he was speaking/writing to or about, and in what time frame, and could have used more details to find my bearings. Still, a compelling documentation of a topic that is both personal and specific to the individual, and important and timely within the bigger picture of gender, identity, and parenthood.

[Roan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated a lot about this - rare to read parenting stories I relate to with this level of detail specificity (not just being a non-binary gestational parent, but having two kids really close together with two different gestational parents). A nonlinear queer parenting family memoir, didn’t read like it was written for cis people (thank god), no pat conclusions, just a life

[Dustin Kurtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, engaging, satisfying—plays with image on the page and in the text. A fantastic book for fans of Maggie Nelson, for all parents trans or nonbinary or cis, and for anyone with a taste for smart narrative nonfiction. I can't recommend it enough.

[Sarah Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this memior, Krys Belc, a transgender male, discusses his parenthood journey, describing carrying, raising, and adopting his child all while focusing on his changing identity and transitioning body. I didn't expect this novel to be so relatable as a cis-woman, but Kris' discourse on pregnancy was written in an emotionally intelligent and insightful way- ways that I've never heard women describe pregnancy and their changing bodies. This was a wonderfully written book that succeeded in taking a nuanced, delicate situation and making it relatable and accessible.

[Chauna Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the very few books out there on queer parenting and queer parent identity (Maggie Nelson comes to mind right away): they're smart, formally interesting and provocative, and so darn well written. Krys Malcolm Belc's book is all that and more. The voice is compelling in its emotional honesty, and the narrative turns in on itself to complicate the narrator's (and the reader's) reflections on what it means to parent and be a "natural mother" in a world that is still so unrelentingly binary.

This was my vacation read (because that's how I roll) and a very worthy one because I couldn't put it down, mesmerized by the language itself. Another win, Counterpoint Press!

[Connie Anne Kikta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Learned a lot.

[Elizabeth Sund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book feels very honest. I appreciate that the author has chosen to share his story.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really extraordinary collection of short essays, many reflecting on photographs both from Belc’s childhood and his child’s, plus the various documents connected to Belc’s pregnancy, marriage, name change, and his partner’s adoption of their child. I inhaled it for the story and now am going back over it more slowly to really absorb all Belc is saying about the complicated intersections of body, gender, family, and parenthood, and the assumptions we make about how they interact.

Some passages:

The machine told us that the baby was a boy. Looking at the machine, we thought we were seeing a body but we were just seeing a reflection. Images of a structure created by sound range. Sound waves directed into me. The machine told us we could know something this way. That we could see something in this dark reflection. Something important. Vital, even. A moving picture: arms waving, baby flipping, legs spread. A baby photographed from the bottom, midflip. When fetal ultrasound was discovered, doctors noted the presence of fetal movement. As if we didn’t know. As if we couldn’t feel. I’M A BOY the machine said. The baby flipped and flipped, became new in the imagination. BOY. I didn’t want anything to change, but it did. I felt jealousy everywhere, deep in the pit he called home. He was so lucky.


I hate having to explain how Samson and I are related. I don’t want my life, his life, to be a surprise. Most of the time, I don’t have to explain. No one asks. Because who would think.


There are things I miss. Before Michigan, before testosterone, sometimes people in Philadelphia would look at me and Samson and know he was mine, think I made him, and they would call him beautiful. No one says that anymore; now they say You’re such a good dad because now they think I am a man and no one thinks men can do anything related to children, least of all make one.

[Christine (Queen of Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Natural Mother of the Child is a creative memoir of nonbinary parenthood.

Author Krys Malcom Belc stitches together essays, recollections, and documentation into a nonlinear book about family and identity. While I really liked his narration, I waited to finish the book until I could page through a print copy. The title comes from adoption paperwork that described Krys as "the natural mother of the child."

Language often seems gendered, but the language around giving birth especially so. "The problem with reading about the science of pregnancy," Belc writes, "is that I cannot help being angry at the words mother and maternal."

Various emotions described throughout are raw, practically visceral at times. This is a memoir rich in reflection, especially when it comes to gender identity and parenthood. Changes in point of view tripped me up in a few places; it's possible the shifts in perspective are clearer when reading the text rather than the audiobook (or for those more used to literary memoir). That wasn't ever show-stopping, but is perhaps something to be aware of to guide your own reading.

Overall, this is a very personal memoir with a meandering style. But it also feels reflective of life in that way, and perhaps one's journey in becoming a parent and, as Belc put it, "know(ing) the person (he) had to become."

Thank you to Counterpoint Press and Goodreads for a giveaway win of this book, as well as Dreamscape Media for a free ALC for review.

[Addy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd been looking forward to reading this book for a year and I found it disappointing. I don't know if it's just because Belc doesn't have the same experience as a parent as I plan to have or his identity is too different, but it just left me feeling like no real, true story was told that made sense. I'm not a huge fan of essay memoirs, so that definitely added to my dislike, but I also found it strange that pictures were an important part of this book and not once were they described in the audiobook. There's a lot of discussion about gender and being pregnant, but really nothing about why he chose to be pregnant as a transmasc person at all or about parenting after infancy. Overall, I think this memoir lacks a lot of context and description and would have been much better as a full book, rather than collection of essays. I want to hear your life experience, not artsy explanations of minute instances over and over that most assuredly were not written with audiobook listeners in mind

[Laura Sackton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my full review of this amazing book in my newsletter: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/p/...

I loved this book fiercely. It's an incredibly thoughtful, creative, layered book about queer and trans parenting, embodiment, and transformation. It moved me, opened me, challenged me. Big big big big recommend.

[Sydney]

"But I know you love the self I walked away from, the piece Samson took with him on the way out. Without him I never could have believed in myself enough to say yes. Yes to hormones, yes to finding out how to live. There was barely any time, a year or two in the beginning, when you loved me thinking I was a woman, but for so many years everyone around us still thought I was. The world was so against us, we thought then, and now the walls have collapsed because look at me. Who would think. When I take our children into the men's room people look at Samson, not me, because he loves to wear pink. Things are simple for me now. Safe. I am a dad and you are a mom. The body I had, the body that made Samson, has faded into the past. Samson says that when other children made fun of him for saying his dad made him, his teacher was right there and said nothing. Expecting anyone knows what to say is where he went wrong. We never used to have to go out of our way to make gay friends and I am sorry I did this to us. I never feel paranoid that you will leave me for someone else because she is a woman, but I do worry you miss the part of me other people never think to imagine."