Do think that La Leche League are now a danger to babies?

And yet, saying that people should avoid the discussion about the theoretical limits of supply for a male person in regards to the ethics as to whether any medical professional be encouraging these male people to do this, is limiting discussion in my opinion. Either people should be able to discuss this issue in relation to male people, or they should not.

As you say, we shall agree to disagree.

Is there any poster amongst the other information posted on this thread that has made this a sole focus? However, it forms part of the full information that is available to us to evaluate to make our own decisions about this issue.

On some previous threads, some posters have brought up what about women with PCOS and testosterone. Here is a study and some commentary on that issue, although to be fair, we rarely see that argument supporting these male people these days. Maybe the message got through...

https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/16/2/244/649618?login=false

I found a study that looked at the hormone levels in women breastfeeding. A breastfeeding women without PCOS has the following testosterone levels at 4 weeks and 8 weeks of breastfeeding :

Ng/ml
4th wk 0.13
8th wk 0.11

A woman with PCOS (ng/ml)

4th week 0.21
8th week 0.26

The male who fed exclusively for 6 weeks started with 0.205 ng/ml or that could have been 2.56 ng/mol because the data is contradictory. That was with the suppression drug that was not noted to change in dose throughout this period because it was not tested.

HOWEVER that suppression is known to be unreliable so the level of testosterone may have fluctuated during the feeding time. Plus of course, there may have been an interaction with the other drugs.

Here is a doctor's view on this study and male feeding.

https://lascapigliata.com/2018/03/26/analysis-of-study-of-induced-lactation-in-trans-identified-man/

"On presentation, the patient was on a gender-affirming regimen that included spironolactone (a heart medication used in this case as an androgen blocker), estradiol, micronised progesterone and “occasional” clonazepam and zolpidem for panic disorder and insomnia."

"At initial appointment, the patient had gynaecomastia (abnormally enlarged breasts in a man, Tanner stage V) that was likely a side effect of spironolactone and cross-sex hormones he was taking."

"Interestingly, it’s unclear what was the patient’s serum testosterone level, because two markedly different results were given, one in the body of text – 256 ng/dL – and another in the results table 1. – 20.52 ng/dL."

"This is problematic not only because it constitutes a glaring inconsistency within the report, but also because the higher result indicates that the patient had male testosterone levels. Considering that the study reported no further testosterone data, indicating that they didn’t measure his testosterone level at any other point in the study, and that 75% of trans-identified men on spironolactone fail to reach testosterone level in the female range, and those who augment the treatment with estradiol have variable response, there is no reliable evidence that adequate androgen blockade was achieved, even though authors claimed that androgen blockade was an important part of the regimen."

And it goes on.....

Well worth a read

There was an analysis done on the "milk" that ONE man claimed to have produced (sample was brought in a bottle, his wife was breastfeeding the child also and the sample size was several times as much as he'd ever produced in an entire day) and apparently that 1 sample had all the same nutritional values as the mothers milk and no traces of any of the drugs that the father was taking 🤔 so it's all good for all men to "feed" their child this way 😱. This is the study that the NHS spokesperson use to justify their statements in the article @Helleofabore linked to.

And some genderist woman went on the BBC to claim, unchallenged that the male milk was nutritionally superior to women's

https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1804224074916258264

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13553033/BBC-News-report-misleading-trans-womens-milk.html

No one is limiting the discussion.

Just use the mismanagement of the low supply (Which we all agree is disgraceful) as the reason for your objection rather than the low supply itself because if you can still make the point without upsetting people I don't see why you wouldn't.

“We will have to agree to disagree on this one because I believe that stating low supply is dangerous to babies and using it as a reason this practice should be discouraged is insulting to women who cannot produce a full supply.”

Let’s do agree to disagree.

Because I find this is a too reminiscent of the argument posters have tried to use to limit the discussion about male people with virilising DSDs to exclude the discussion about testosterone impacts on female sports because it is offensive to female people with PCOS who have slightly higher testosterone levels. And you probably won’t agree with that either and that is perfectly ok.

I completely agree!!

It's not the low supply that is the issue it's the motivation, the poor management of the low supply and the 'milk' not necessarily being safe. The motivation being the most objectionable thing to most people.

So I would really rather people leave the low supply out of it.

Agreed, but there's another issues too, which is the motivation of the male person who wants to do this.

When a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth, her body should, if all is working as it should, start lactating so she can feed the baby with her own milk, which will alter in composition depending on the baby's needs. If she chooses to feed the baby, her motivation is obvious: she has a newborn baby to care for and her milk is the best food the baby can have, both nutritionally and because of the benefits to the baby's immune system. The mother doesn't have to wonder if this is the best thing to do, except in very particular circumstances, e.g. when she's on certain kinds of medication, because we have our entire history as mammals showing that this is the normal biological mechanism for our species to nourish our young. It's perfectly safe. It isn't always easy or particularly enjoyable for a woman to breastfeed, but even in those circumstances many women persist with it if their baby is getting enough milk and thriving, because they put their baby's needs first.

A male person cannot go through pregnancy and birth, and cannot approximate lactation without taking medication. Why would a male person want to do this, when it's a very novel thing and not shown to be safe for the baby? Why would he want to do this when the evidence is that he can't produce enough liquid to meet the baby's needs? Why wouldn't he instead want his child (or grandchild ) to have the best possible nutrition, provided either by the baby's mother or by perfectly safe formula, or possibly by donated breastmilk?

We know why. As shown very clearly on this and other threads when their own words are quoted, it's all about meeting their own needs for validation and for appropriating female experiences. Some of them have stated explicitly that they find it exciting, for which we have to read 'sexually thrilling'. It is utterly unacceptable for men to use a newborn baby for these purposes. It's a massive safeguarding fail that medical professionals and voluntary groups like LLL are facilitating this rather than condemning it and contacting social services.

@Helleofabore so to be clear, the issue is not that trans women cannot produce a full milk supply because there is nothing wrong with combi feeding and lots of biological women are unable to produce a full milk supply. The issues are that;

Medical professionals were allowing the baby to starve. As we have established from mine and other posters experiences LLL encourage women to starve their babies at the breast too. So again it is not really relevant to say that this is an issue with trans woman attempting to breast feed. LLL advice on this is harmful to babies regardless of the status of the parent.

The milk itself is untested and potentially harmful. Completely agree. THIS is the real issue as it is potentially harmful to the babies. Therefore it would be best to focus on the milk itself in terms of harm to the baby, not supply issues if you want to keep it completely factual and not morality based because low supply is not dangerous to a baby, the poor management of low supply is what is dangerous to babies.

“Medical professionals were allowing the baby to starve. As we have established from mine and other posters experiences LLL encourage women to starve their babies at the breast too. So again it is not really relevant to say that this is an issue with trans woman attempting to breast feed. LLL advice on this is harmful to babies regardless of the status of the parent.”

It is not LLL who is working with the male people that I have posted about. And just because LLL and other organisations might be over zealous in their recommendations to women, I don’t agree at all with you that we should not discuss it openly on threads.

I consider that there is a difference between stating specifically that a male person has never produced enough supply and should not be encouraged to start, because they too are being told they can exclusively feed an infant , and an organisation wrongfully making female people, women, ashamed for not producing enough supply. When it is an establish fact that female people can, under the right conditions, produce enough milk for an infant to grow.

The entire point is that no male person should have been ever told that they could do this, and at least twice infants were put at great risk while under a medical clinician’s care! Not LLL’s care ! A medical clinician who encouraged a male person to feed exclusively and did rudimentary and inadequate tests on that infant that they put at risk.

It is absolutely an issue that needs to be included in the conversation. Because whereas a woman has theoretically got the ability to supply but then may not be able to or even want to achieve this due to many reasons, no male has that ability from the start.

Yet those male people are being encouraged to do this because some academics and unethical medical professionals have put those male people’s feelings ahead of the infants that are also supposed to be in their care.

It is part of the issue on both the aspect of the ethics of the medical teams encouraging this and not centring the child, and on the aspect that there isn’t a way to describe this act as a viable proposition for the infant from the start. Ie. it could even be said to be a project only about centring that male person. Never about the child in question.

You believe the point is irrelevant, I don’t agree with you.

This happened to me too, 30 years ago now. It was the most awful thing. Thank god for my wonderful GP who stepped in early and said it was ok to bottle feed my poor baby(my head was in the shed, and I was very weak after the PPH). I still have guilt about it but was also angry at the 'care' I received immediately post partum.

Women are the ones who need genuine help and support. Not narcissistic men with a fetish.

Re the LLL dangerous advice - I struggled to BF with DD1, I had a huge PPH and lost 3.5 pints of blood. Midwives neglected to tell me that this would affect my supply so I couldn’t understand why she lost so much weight by day 5.

LLL advice was to keep feeding because supply and demand will sort it all out. Nonsense. It didn’t work. Fenugreek and temporary formula top ups did. I ditched the formula top ups after 3 days and successfully breastfed exclusively for another 3 years, but had I not sought extra help my DD would have been in hospital

You know what's so weird about this. If it related to any other thing that your child was struggling to 'learn' you'd be lambasted if you didn't step in.

Can't use a fork? God forbid don't help them or they'll never learn.
Can't tie their shoelaces? Let them repeatedly trip over them until they get it.
Can't clip their bike helmet on properly? Well they'll just have to toughen up and manage won't they?

But sure...let's put a newborn who has only just developed the ability to, you know, see, to the test on this one.

The La Leche League have been dangerous to babies for a long time.

When struggling with my low milk supply due to PCOS I was advised I must keep going, do not offer formula under any circumstances, low supply isn't really a thing it's just poor management of breast feeding, don't fall into the formula trap! I took domperidone for a month and still couldn't produce enough to feed my baby. When I had improved my supply to roughly half what my baby needed and could combi feed, her latch was so poor due to tongue tie she couldn't get the milk out of the breast and was helplessly sucking on a full breast but still not getting milk. Those sycophants were adamant that I should put baby to the breast every single time she cried and deny her the formula top ups she desperately needed. She would eventually learn to get the milk out whereas if I gave her a bottle she would never learn because we would be enabling her not trying hard enough. Who cares if she starves in the meantime! I ended up pumping and bottle feeding her breast milk. Cue all the preaching that baby can get more milk than a pump, I don't really have a low supply it's just exclusive pumping that makes me think that way. Thats only true if baby's latch is good! If baby can't transfer milk from the breast due to oral issues they will never get anything substantial, nor the same amount as the pump let alone more!

I am not alone. LLL tell women with low supply to starve their babies at the breast for weeks on end, some end up in hospital with failure to thrive because of this dangerous advice. Formula is not poison and combi feeding is valid, babies still get all the protection breast feeding offers them.

The down side of combi feeding is cost, formula is expensive! But when you have low milk supply you have no choice. But LLL have been directly responsible for making formula so expensive as they lobbied for the laws that mean formula brands can't advertise and supermarkets cant include formula in discount schemes because they claimed it would discourage women from breast feeding, when actually all it does is punish those who can't and make it a scary reality that some women can't afford to feed their baby so they resort to dangerous practices like milk sharing from untested donor's on social media and watering down formula to make it last longer.

To bring it back to the argument, LLL didn't just encourage the trans woman to starve the baby at the breast, they encourage many woman to starve their babies at the breast.

The breast feeding support network was fantastic in helping me through my breastfeeding difficulties and supported me to combi feed for 6 months until I just couldn't keep up any more and my supply dried up completely. They also allow whole families to attend not just women so my husband learned all about breastfeeding and how he could help me and support me best. He was the one at home with me helping our tongue tied baby latch when I was totally overwhelmed and the midwives had abandoned us. LLL banned partners from helping or being involved and made them wait outside.

TLDR LLL have been a danger to babies experiencing feeding problems for a long time. If it was left to LLL my breastfeeding journey would have been over at 2/3 weeks and my baby would have been malnourished. The breastfeeding support network is far superior and have the ability to refer into the infant teams in hospitals which is what we needed and their continued support and acceptance of my husband enabled my baby to have breast milk for 6 months because the breast feeding support network offer real support whereas LLL offer militant ideology. I would be quite happy to see LLL be shut down altogether. BFN is more than enough, and better.

Am I going insane, or is the person being discussed here...the grandad of this newborn baby??

Entering into a discussion about it being whether or not it's a sufficient supply or source of nutrition allows those who want to direct the discourse as to how to make it a chemical discussion specifically to deflect away from the bare fact that it's to facilitate men who want to make babies suck on their nipples (no doubt publicly) without ending up on a register.

Redirecting it from the moral issue - 'should this be done' - to 'It's fine for men to do it How can it be done?' is exactly what they want.