Puberty blockers

As a parent of a young transgender child, I had the gift of time. My child came to me to tell me who she was years before she was dealing with her body changing into the wrong gender. I had time to research and prepare. I spoke with other parents and professionals and thought it was going to be years away.  I was hypervigilant, waiting to see a sign of puberty starting so that I could start the medical component of parenting my transgender child and protect her from her body maturing into the wrong gender.  For my daughter, it would be terrible for her mental health to go through male puberty.

When she was young, the only change we made as parents was allow our child to dress as herself, change her name and use correct pronouns (social affirmation). Young kids only need this social affirmation. There is no medical or surgical transition for a child before puberty. Social affirmation helps the child tremendously by validating the inner person that they are. When people are recognized for who they are they can be themselves. And, if they are not validated, mental health issues can have severe consequences.

Years went by when I didn’t think about having to do any medical intervention. When it was time, my daughter’s therapist needed to write a letter for the endocrinologist documenting that this is who she is and what she needs.  My daughter went for bloodwork before her appointment with the endocrinologist. Based on the test results, she was starting male puberty. This meant that she needed to have a puberty blocker. This is either a small tube inserted into the arm or hormone shots that temporarily stops the wrong puberty. This is a puberty pause button that gives kids time to figure out who they are. It’s a temporary suppression of the wrong hormones for her body. There is nothing permanent about this and gives her time to make sure that this is really who she is.  We could have have taken out the blocker and let puberty take its natural course. Puberty blockers stopped her body from betraying her with a puberty that does not align with her identity.

This is all background to explain what we needed to do for our child. The doctor had to fill out a prescription and this had to be sent to our pharmacy. We were privileged to have insurance that covered most of this expensive cost.  There was a large amount of effort to get one prescription filled. It was hours of my time, speaking with many people in a few different companies multiple times. However, it was finally approved and sent to the hospital where it was inserted in my daughter’s arm to stay there for a year. This was all to support my daughter’s health.   The amount of hoops I had to jump through was surprising. Then, we met with the nurse and scheduled the surgery within the month. The surgery went well and there were no complications.

This was for the first step in her medical treatment protocol. I’m grateful beyond words that we were able to support her in blocking the wrong puberty from happening to her body. Her body turning into a man’s body would have been catastrophic.  We were lucky to have insurance to pay for the blocker.  If my child’s body became a traitor to her and she got secondary permanent male characteristics, it could have serious consequences for her mental health.

This is a video from a pediatrician in the UK to explain the puberty pause button better.