Mom And Dad Who've Both Swapped Gender Just Had Their Second Child

Jake and Hannah Graf welcome the birth of their second child, a sister for Millie, their two-year-old. As Millie pushes her doll's pram across the kitchen, Hannah, who is gorgeous but exhausted, bottle-feeds their newborn baby while pausing to stroke her sibling's head and exclaim, "Baby!"

All the joyful products of the new birth are strewn about the room, including toys, bouquets, cards, packs of diapers, and a crib with a pink crocheted shawl.

Jake, the delighted father, is presiding over the joyful chaos while distributing beverages and snacks and bribing Millie to eat her fruit.

It's the kind of domestic chaos that occurs in a million across the nation when a new sibling is welcomed, and two frazzled parents are managing the demands of a toddler eager to assert her presence while still being engrossed in the milky bliss of a newborn.

The road to parenting has been fairly difficult for actor, writer, and film director Jake and his wife Hannah, a former Army captain. The transgender couple used eggs that Jake collected during a break in his hormone therapy to have two children through surrogacy.

Two years before meeting Hannah, he had donor sperm used to fertilize them. By happy coincidence, he had picked the donor to be exactly like his wife—"a tall, sporty, brown-eyed engineer"—to balance his own shorter stature and more artistic abilities.

The couple is now a little surprised by the path their lives have gone.

‘A father of two! It’s more than I ever imagined,’ marvels Jake. ‘Just saying the words seems beyond my reality.’

Hannah, who is more measured than her exuberant husband, adds: ‘It’s hard to imagine I once doubted this life was possible. Some so many trans people would love to have a relationship and family like ours. We’re very lucky.’

‘Our surrogate, Laura — who carried both girls for us — has given us the most amazing gifts and she did so entirely altruistically.’

It was Laura's idea to carry their second child, after all. ‘She called us and said: “I really loved the experience and I would happily do it again”,’ recalls Jake.

Their expanded family now includes Laura, a single mother of two who resides in Ireland. We frequently communicate with her, and Millie affectionately refers to her as Auntie Laura.

Lynsey, Laura's sister, watched with Millie while Hannah and Jake went to the hospital when the family moved to Ireland for the delivery.

‘Laura asked us: “Do you want to be in the room for the birth?” We felt she should have privacy, but we stood right outside the door,’ says Hannah. ‘All went to plan and Jake was with me when I had my first skin-to-skin cuddle with Teddie.’

I've known Jake, 44, and Hannah, 35, for four years. I've watched their happy relationship grow from being just partners to being husband and wife in 2018 and then joyous parents of their first child. Now, the two of them are a family of four.

No one, you would think, could fail to wish them well: they are a loving, caring mother and father, made all the more committed to their children by the difficulties they encountered on the road to parenthood.

But now, more than ever before, they feel under threat. ‘Bigots say: “You shouldn’t have your kids around these people”, and a lot of hatred has been stoked up against our tiny community,’ says Jake. ‘But when people meet us, the myths are dispelled.’

‘We’re just normal — not the freaks and weirdos we’re made out to be. People make ill-informed judgments based on prejudices without even talking to us.’

One of the most wildly unlikely ones is that they will raise their children to be transgender, which, the Grafs point out, is no more feasible than raising your child to be gay. They feel strongly that they need to protect their daughters from these misconceptions about the trans community.

‘As parents ourselves we know we have to respect our children’s individuality,’ says Jake. ‘But, honestly, we would never choose for them to be trans. It’s a very hard life. You face more hatred and prejudice and it’s vastly more complicated to have a family.’

‘I think people expect us to have rainbow flags draped all over the house and to be bringing up the kids gender-neutral, which has never occurred to us. I love Millie in pink. She wears it all the time.’

‘She’s just a child and she loves jumping, playing in the sandpit, picking flowers, and painting. We haven’t pushed her in any direction. We’ll just support her in whatever she wants to do. When she rocks up at her grandparents in pink, they all melt. But she has a little black Levis T-shirt, too, like her Mum.'

Susan, Jake's mother, is now fully behind her son. She did pay the $19,700 to freeze his embryos while he was in his 30s, and like Hannah's mother, Wendy is madly in love with her grandchildren. Brian is a program manager.

The mother, father, and two young daughters are seated in their garden, which is flooded with lilies, roses, and jasmine. The girls are blissfully unaware of the controversy surrounding their parents and are safe in their parents' love.

‘The vast majority of us are kind, decent people, and when isolated instances of inappropriate behavior occur, they should not be considered as representative of an entire community,’ says Jake.

The Graf family is a special one because they are determined to nurture their two young children in a loving environment, not because Jake and Hannah are transgender. They are lovely and respectable people.