Puberty
STAGES OF PUBERTY
Pre-Puberty Changes
A number of changes occur during middle childhood:
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Children become stronger as their muscle mass increases.
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Motor skills—in both strength and coordination—improve.
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A school-age child's hair may become a little darker.
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The texture and appearance of a child's skin gradually changes, becoming more like that of an adult. (healthychildren.org)
Children with Ovaries
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Breast budding starts around age ten, with some starting as early as eight and others not starting until thirteen.
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Peak growth period (in height, weight, muscle mass, and the like) occurs about one year after puberty has begun.
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Menstruation usually starts about 18 months to two years after the onset of puberty. On average, the first menses occur just before turning thirteen.
Children with Testes
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Enter puberty about one year later than children with ovaries. The first sign is enlargement of the testes and a thinning and reddening of the scrotum, which happens at an average age of eleven but may occur anytime between nine to fourteen years.
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Peak growth period occurs about two years after the beginning of puberty.
Here is more in-depth information about the puberty stages:
PUBERTY BLOCKERS
Bodily changes during puberty can be frightening, especially if they are not in line your gender. Puberty blockers, also called hormone suppressant drugs, are often used on transgender children and adolescents. Puberty blockers stop or limit the growth of the body by halting production of specific hormones in the body. Transgender youth can be administered puberty blockers once the first sex characteristics begin to appear, or soon afterwards. By delaying puberty, the teenager has an opportunity to explore their gender identity before their body permanently changes. Without the time to explore their gender identity before puberty, a gender-questioning child may become trapped in a body they don’t feel comfortable in. Not all children who take puberty blockers will identify as transgender as adults; some will change gender identity later in life, some might not.
Puberty blockers do not permanently change the body, they simply press the pause button on the endocrine system (the organs that regulate hormone production). Growth hormones in your body cease production. The effects of puberty blockers are completely reversible: if one decides to stop taking them their body will continue to grow from the stage they stopped at. They have not been known to have any effects on reproductive ability. There may be a risk, however, for people who may want to have vaginoplasty to construct a vagina. Taking puberty blockers early may mean that someone with a penis will not be able to have the most commonly used surgery for vaginoplasty, but there are other surgical options available. We will not know the long-term effects that puberty blockers have on bone mass development or height until the first people to use the drugs have grown older (Karin Selva, MD and Transgender Health Information Program).
PERIOD ENVY
Period envy is experienced by some trans women. It is the longing for menstruation that is not usually possible, unless you are able to pay for multiple surgeries. Kat Callahan, trans journalist and columnist, writes about her experiences with the subject:
“Trans women and menstruation: it's a touchy subject. For trans women, navigating conversations about menstruation can be difficult. If we come off as too interested, we also come off as creepy or even fetishising. If we seem to be uncomfortable or uninterested in discussions involving Aunt Flo, then we can often make our cis friends uncomfortable with our presence in women only or women dominated spaces. Go too far in either direction, and you're bound to highlight your trans status in a way that is othering.
That said, after a rather pointed discussion with a friend of mine who does not have issues with her own periods (they're apparently textbook regular, low flow, not terribly problematic, and other women despise her for it), and quite a lot of thinking, I realised in the event of an affordable, normalised transplant procedure for uteri (which I often point out is being developed, although we are just in the initial stages), I would probably choose to get one. I've actual cis friends who claim to be just as serious about getting rid of their uteri, that they seriously do not want them, will not have children, and think they would serve a much better purpose being given to trans and cis women without uteri. I think in some cases, we can take such comments with a grain of salt, but I am sure there are genuine examples. Not to mention trans men.”
Read more:
https://groupthink.kinja.com/no-i-wont-ask-about-your-period-yes-you-can-tell-me-957509371
TRANS MOTHERHOOD
Blue wants to be a mom even though they are told “only girls are moms.” If one can afford expensive surgeries, it is possible to construct a working uterus to conceive a child in. This is not a luxury that many can afford, and not everyone wants it. Katelyn Burns, a trans freelance journalist, writes about her experience as a trans woman who does not menstruate as well as being a mother who did not birth her children:
“As a child, when an adult would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always answer with one of those traditional vocations: star athlete, firefighter, police officer, etc. But my secret answer, the one I knew I could never tell another soul, was that I’ve always wanted to be a mommy. I didn’t know why or how at the time — I mean, I was only 10 years old — but I knew it was what I wanted more than anything. I used to lie in bed at night, convincing myself that I really had secret “girl parts” hidden inside me that would soon become apparent when puberty would turn me into the girl I knew myself to be. No such luck came.
These days, my lack of menstruation is used against me by those who deny my womanhood. Every day a new transphobic person or a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) will discover my trans advocacy work or my Twitter account and come at me, demanding to know about my genitals. They claim that the only fact determining womanhood is the ability to bear children or to have periods. That ability is obviously something I will never have, but that’s also true of many cisgender women. Are we to exclude all women who struggle with fertility from the definition of woman? No. Many trans women yearn for their own fertility, and being told that we’re not real women because of our lack of menstruation is one of the most hurtful, personal attacks you can wage on us…
A lack of fertility often also denies trans women romantic possibilities. It doesn’t take long for a trans woman’s natural fertility to end once HRT [Hormone Replacement Therapy] begins, so their inability to have kids is often cited as a blanket reason for both male and female cis people to exclude them from the dating pool.”
Read more:
http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/1122689/menstruation-matters-transgender