To think that the NHS had lost the plot over breastfeeding?

[WandaWomblesaurus]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10892531/NHS-accused-putting-babies-harm-advice-trans-women-wanting-breastfeed.html

It feels like some kind of bizarre experiment - except it's babies who are being used for affirmation.

Am I being gaslit here?

Oh. I see....

You are keen to post your own prejudiced negative generalisations about MN.

You agree that males should not be assisted in attempts to breastfeed, but you believe that all MN posters are unable to rationally debate the topic.

Talk about 'blanket statements' and inferences of 'prejudices'.

Maybe you could point out which posts are acceptable to remain by your standard and which posts are hysterical and irrational.

I think there is a fine, non-offensive use of 'ciswoman', to just mean, identify with your natal sex.

I'm sorry but no.

The attempt to take the word "woman" away from actual women is related to the conflation of sex and gender.

Sex is the biological reality.

Gender [roles or stereotypes] are the socially & historically constructed roles or stereotypes expected of humans of each sex.

For women & girls, these roles, and the construction of gender, are oppressive and part of a structural organisation of society & culture around patriarchy - the centring of men/boys, ad masculinity ("man" as the default human), and all te flows from that.

So to tell a woman she is "cis" coerces her to acquiesce to oppressive gender roles & stereotypes.

That is offensive.

Sorry I was responding to @AgathaAllAlong 's statement that:

I think there is a fine, non-offensive use of 'ciswoman', to just mean, identify with your natal sex.

There really isn't a non-offensive way to use the term "cis" - it's very invention was designed to oppress and sideline women.

Yes. Pretty much sums it up. Thanks Rene

I hope now you understand that I have not said on any thread that all males are doing this as a sexual fetish.

I have been very clear about what I believe.

That no male should be encouraged or assisted to do this until there is some very very clear and indisputable evidence that it has benefits for that child over formula milk or a breastmilk donation from another female who is expressing that milk as a consequence of being pregnant.

Do you agree with that statement?

The very fact that a male chooses to do this and it results in an infant not receiving the nutritional value they need IS A SAFEGUARDING issue as it has the potential to harm that infant.

Do you agree in my opinion that safeguarding covers a range of risks not just 'sexual abuse'?

Surely you can see this is a problematic blanket statement?

Please point to where I have made a problematic blanket statement. I am very happy to review how the statements I make are coming across as I have a pretty foggy brain today.

Otherwise, we are talking at cross purposes, although from your very first post on this thread, it seems you have certain prejudices about people who also hold opinions on this topic and have hypocritically engaged according to those.

According to the NHS, a newborn baby will need around 150-200ml of milk per kilo by the end of their first week. For a breastfeeding mother that means hours and hours of cluster feeding, especially at night whilst the baby builds up the mother's milk supply. The mother can provide the exact nutrients for HER baby's needs because she has carried the baby through pregnancy and given birth. Perhaps I'm simple but I just can't see how a person who hasn't been pregnant, given birth, and doesn't have the exact anatomy and hormonal balance required for breastfeeding could meet all if the baby's nutritional needs.

Just because it can sometimes be done with a lot of medical intervention, that doesn't mean it should be done. For the same reason I don't particularly like the idea of IVF for women who are 45+.

Hi all

I know this might not be the most relevant reply but given you're all mums who go to a lot of effort to provide good meals for your children, this may be the ideal place to ask. I am a Psychology Conversion MSc student at the University of Reading and am looking for parents of a child aged between 2-16 years old to answer my questionnaire about their experience of a family mealtime. You could win one of three £50 Amazon vouchers and I would really appreciate your time and valuable insight.

reading.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/family-mealtime-questionnaire-3

YADNBU

As an aside, I don't want to be referred to as a "chest feeder"

Perhaps I'm simple but I just can't see how a person who hasn't been pregnant, given birth, and doesn't have the exact anatomy and hormonal balance required for breastfeeding could meet all if the baby's nutritional needs.

You're not simple. Of course they can't. How we've got to this place where people pretend they can, I don't know.

In all the discussion about the homophobia, transphobia and language used to describe females, it seems that posts discussing just this issue were ignored for some reason.

But here is an article that discusses exactly your point.

An expert who reviewed the study that was being discussed in the article stated:

' After three months of treatment, this increased to 227 grams of breast milk per day. Once the baby was born, she was able to exclusively breastfeed the infant for six weeks – during which time a paediatrician confirmed the baby was growing and developing normally and healthily.'

'Although significant, this is below the average of around 500 grams that a baby consumes by the time the it is 5 days old. After six weeks, the woman supplemented her breastfeeding with formula.'

* Note 'woman' in this sentence is in fact, referring to a male.

www.newscientist.com/article/2161151-transgender-woman-is-first-to-be-able-to-breastfeed-her-baby/#ixzz6f2Pil0Ik

As I said in my post pages back.... I have trouble with this.

'during which time a paediatrician confirmed the baby was growing and developing normally and healthily.'

So... an infant was undernourished but declared to be developing normally and healthily???

And to all those posters who are keen to have studies done.... how is this to be done ethically without males then feeding infants in the meantime? Or donating milk as at least two males have had the intention of doing that I have read about?

Is it ethical to induce lactation and then tell that male that they absolutely should not be feeding any infant? Isn't that cruel?

Or is it then feeding into a desire to achieve the 'ultimate in womanising' just to to see if they can do it and give them that experience?

And when it moves onto actually feeding a child? How will that be done knowing that if it is left to a male to exclusively feed a child, they may insist on that while it undernourishes that child?

And is it ethical to conduct an experiment with an infant where there is NO possible way to naturally produce colostrum and the milk needed in those very early stages?

How is that ethical at all?

Let's discuss this in as much depth as we can rather than leaving it as an amorphous 'let's do the studies'? That might calm your dissonance, but it certainly doesn't make me all comfortable for the ethics of this situation.

(all references to 'you' is a general 'you' by the way)

But you have also conveniently ignored the last part of that paragraph; "but only if other things have not worked"

For a TW, or a women who has not given birth herself, that is the only thing that can work, and would therefore have to be given first-line.

The very fact that that phrase is in there suggests it should only be used as a last resort, when breast-feeding is beneficial for the baby. It is not beneficial for a baby to be breast-fed by a TW or a woman who didn't give birth to that baby; in those cases, either formula or breastmilk from the mother that gave birth is the most beneficial and least risky option. Domperidone is not without risk.

And to all those posters who are keen to have studies done.... how is this to be done ethically without males then feeding infants in the meantime? Or donating milk as at least two males have had the intention of doing that I have read about?

It would be very easy to design a study without involving infants- seems like you're creating problems @Helleofabore

Depends what specific research question you're trying to answer - but the most pressing seems to be "is the milk produced from TW comparable to that of women".

You would recruit a sample of TW & comparable lactating mothers. Follow the protocols referenced for TW. Volumes, nutritional content, presence of hormones etc can then be compared between the two groups.

Is it ethical to induce lactation and then tell that male that they absolutely should not be feeding any infant? Isn't that cruel?

I mean, you don't seem to be too considered with the feelings of transwomen, but sure.

There are plenty of trials & research studies that could be considered "cruel" because they raise hopes which may be dashed. All studies go through an ethics board & stringent checks to make sure harms to participants are minimised and not unacceptable. A study won't be approved if it is deemed unethical.

To be clear - I'm just answering the questions posed, as a research scientist.

I predict an onslaught of WHY FUND RESEARCH FOR TW WHEN CANCER EXISTS etc etc - I am not suggesting what budgets should or should not be spent on, however it is likely such research would be funded by charities rather than taxpayers.

You would recruit a sample of TW & comparable lactating mothers.

How would a lactating mother and a transwoman be comparable?

As a research scientist surely you know that they hardly know anything about breast milk.

They only just figured out day and night milk are different and they are quite obvious hormones which they finally decided to look for.

If this male milk research drives the research in understanding actual breast milk then I am all for.

Shame only time anything gets done is when it benefits the greater sex 🙄

You misunderstand.

In a research study, you aim to reduce differences that could be caused by other factors.

By "comparable", I mean you wouldn't want a group of south Asian teenagers recruited from a village up North being compared to a group of white transwoman in their 40s from London.

I don't believe misgendering is allowed on Mumsnet, so given you've been advised that this person doesn't identify as "cis" & you have misgendered her, I think the accepted thing to do is apologise, rather than double down.

And you do not explain.

How would you deem a lactating mother and a transwoman to be comparable for the purposes of a study into lactating and breast milk? What characteristics would they need to share and how do these make the study valid?

If you wanted to start to answer the question "is milk from TW safe to consume", this is how you would do it.

You seem determined to have an argument though. As I've already explained what "comparable" would mean in this context.

You want any differences in the milk to be explained by the fact it's from a transwoman than a woman, rather than because of their age or ethnicity etc.

Otherwise, if you proved that milk from transwomen was nutritonally shite or whatever, it would be a resonable criticism of the study to say it might have been confounded by age differences. Thus meaning the study wouldn't be considered robust or high quality, and wouldn't be as strong of an argument against preventing TW attempting breastfeeding. @ReneBumsWombats

For example.

I asked you a to define a word you used in the context of how it related to the study. You responded that I didn't understand.

I rephrased the question of how you define your term. You accused me of wanting an argument and made up your own ideas of what you assume I must think.

Quite the cool, dispassionate scientific approach there, Professor. I might be interested in the results of your studies if you could at least explain how they work.

But how can you compare the milk if you don’t know what you are looking for?

Or am I being dumb by saying you can only measure something when you look for it? Or do we have some kind of magic blender that processes all molecules into known with quantities and unknown and prints out a nice spreadsheet?

Ok - another example @ReneBumsWombats

Say you recruited from a sample of teen mothers where rates of poverty were relatively high, and were comparing them against a group of wealthy white TW.

You would be introducing bias by doing this - the milk outcomes (volume, nutritional content etc) from the women group might be look worse or comparable to that of the TW group becasue of factors like malnutrition.

This could get published and be used as an argument for TW breastfeeding, when in reality it was due to shite study design.

Correct.

I suggested outcomes like volume, nutritional content and hormone levels, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be something harmful that no-one has considered.

Sort of like the coronavirus vaccines and the CVST complication.