Beatie, born a woman but legally a man, sat down with Winfrey on Thursday to discuss his highly publicized pregnancy.

"We thought it was best that we tell our story, instead of other people telling the story for us," wife Nancy says of the decision to appear on Oprah.

"I think people will be shocked because no one's ever heard of a man giving birth before," Thomas says. "I guess it's a shocking concept, but in this day and age, that's possible."

"I bet a lot of women would like to have their husbands pregnant," jokes Nancy.

Thomas and Nancy have been married for five years, and have been trying to have children for two; Nancy is unable to bear children due to endometriosis.

"I actually opted not to do anything to my reproductive organs" during transitioning to male, Thomas explains, "because I wanted to have a child one day. I didn't know how -- it was just a dream, you know, there was no plan laid out." He says that, when reaching out to advocacy organizations for information and advice, he was ignored by some and urged by others not to publicize his pregnancy, worried that the world "wasn't ready."

"I think the world is taking it all in right now," says Oprah.

Beatie, before transitioning, dated women. His first girlfriend asked why he couldn't be satisfied presenting as a lesbian, and Oprah wondered the same. "Sexuality is a completely different topic than how you feel as your gender," Thomas explains. "The gender role in society that I...felt most comfortable being, or gravitating to, was a male gender role.

"It's hard to explain how it is a separate issue."

"When I woke up in the morning, I felt like a man," he continues. "It was difficult for society to respect me the way I felt on the inside if my outside didn't match it."

"I have a very stable male gender identity," Beatie says of reconciling his decision to carry a child with his transitioned gender. "I see pregnancy as a process, and it doesn't define who I am."

The following clip contains portions of the episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast April 3, 2008. More on this is available at Oprah.com.