For real. A man named Thomas Beatie is going to have a baby. And no, not in some Gloria Steinem alternate reality.

Beatie, Popular Fidelity reports, was born a woman, but had gender reassignment surgery. His wife couldn’t get pregnant, but he still could. So now the child’s father will be the one to give birth.

And now a word from Thomas:
How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child-I am so lucky to have such a loving, supportive wife. I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.

More power to them. People are sure to call this situation freakish, but the family actually sounds pretty suburban and normal except for this one challenge to traditional new-baby protocol (we see Miss Manners adjusting her baby shower etiquette chapter). We know families way wackier, and in far less ground-breaking ways.

A married man who used to be a woman says that he is pregnant and will give birth to a baby girl in July.

“How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” wrote Thomas Beatie, 34, from the Pacific North West of the United States, in the latest issue of the gay magazine The Advocate.

“Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.”

Mr Beatie was born female, named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to a woman.