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

[WandsOut]

www.thetimes.com/article/dbc0da0f-9255-47d9-8819-f407afeb233c?shareToken=0104affbaef0be8bc38b6f33d859c0aa

The bullying described here and the sheer idiocy of insisting by that biological males must be supported in breastfeeding is insane.

AIBU to say they have lost the plot and need to be investigated?

YABU - man milk is as good if not better than women's milk according to activists
"On Monday night, the BBC chose to discuss the man-milk affair with a young woman called Kate Luxion, an unqualified ‘trainee lactation consultant’ and a researcher at UCL. With a composed and serious expression, Luxion insisted that not only was man milk safe, but ‘studies’ had actually found that a trans woman’s milk contained more nutrients than the milk of a baby’s mother. The presenter nodded happily along. Nod, nod, smile, smile. Yep, sounded right to her."

archive.ph/2v26b

They probably bought them (surrogates) in the US.

And dangerous to mothers' mental health.

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.

You clearly missed the words "drug infused liquid from male nipples".

Not sure how.

YANBU, Marian Tompson is an absolute legend of integrity for resigning and I’m heartbroken that her amazing work to help women and babies has been shat all to, as she’s PERFECTLY put it in her statement, indulge in the fantasies of men.

Women who struggle with milk supply can be prescribed with Domperidone.

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

See my GP wouldn’t prescribe it because of the side effects! MN suggested Fenugreek to increase supply from Holland and Barrett. It was great advice I suddenly turned into a human supersoaker

"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."

Yes, limiting it to a 'moral issue' has the following results from what I have seen and directly experienced:

Gets professional women removed from their roles a whole lot quicker than stating the blunt facts about the direct harms to the infant.

Makes the discussion centred mainly on the male person and not centred on the infant where the majority of the focus should be - on that infant's welfare.

Leaves people commenting open to being abused for being transphobic, hateful and many other accusations because the discussion has been directed to judgements on morality.

Allows the discussion to cycle around and around on morality issues (as you say) and fails to actually inform people about what is happening and how it directly impacts the infants involved. I have just spent days where another poster decided that they would censure how women spoke about this very topic to the point where they were abusive to others. All because, while they didn't agree with male people feeding infants from their nipples, they were outraged that words were being used in ways they did not agree with. Yet, that poster had fuck all to contribute other than shaming women discussing the issue.

Leads to entire threads being deleted and this then removes much of the evidence stashed in these threads for further reference.

When entire threads are deleted, posts are removed and posters continue to focus on morality and not on all the facts available, this leads to women on Mumsnet no longer feeling comfortable to discuss it at all. This is ends up being a silencing effect.

If people cannot discuss all the issues around a problem, then they and others go away with only partial information. This leads to a weaker position when they might actually be in a position to make decisions and policy on this very topic. Just like the BBC producer who put a gender studies person into a segment requiring an expert on breastfeeding - that producer focused on the morality of the issue.

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."

Yes, this is why both angles are needed. It gives all the information and allows a person to draw conclusions that are more likely to be accurate. I have found that this discussion cannot be either / or. Some people will come at it from one angle and dismiss the others, but generally knowing all the information is important,

In this instance it was the grandfather who was doing this.

There are red flags all over this case. Yet, there were professionals who were actively involved with this!

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.

Well said!! It's insane!!

They can learn or starve trying! If you give the evil bottle they will never learn!

La Leche League fanatics are dangerous.

@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.

Yes, this is why both angles are needed. It gives all the information and allows a person to draw conclusions that are more likely to be accurate. I have found that this discussion cannot be either / or. Some people will come at it from one angle and dismiss the others, but generally knowing all the information is important,

Having witnessed quite a few of these discussions, I agree.

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.

“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.

Absolutely! My DD is now nearly 12 and I’m still fuming about the poor treatment and blame after my PPH. Our stories are told the world over yet men with fishes are prioritised

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.

I think you are misunderstanding me. The problem is not that women are shamed for not being able to produce a supply. The problem is that some women are physically incapable of producing a full supply, but instead of accepting this as fact and simply telling these women to supplement with formula, LLL tell them to just keep feeding and the supply will expand to meet demand. Do not give formula, just keep putting the hungry baby to the empty breast and your supply will increase to meet babies needs. This is categorically not true in some cases and the babies are starving and failing to gain weight while their mothers refuse to supplement them, not out of shame but because they are being given incorrect information.

LLL are wrongfully telling women they can exclusively breast feed a baby if they just try hard enough. It is simply not true. It's not about shame, it's about misinformation putting babies in danger. The title of the thread is about LLL being a dangerous organisation, and this is why I agree that it is.

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. Women with IGT or hormonal will never be able to produce a full supplty, that is no reason to tell them not try in the first place!

In my view, the poor management of low supply is what is dangerous to babies not the low supply itself. Which is why I feel that the inclusion of low supply in this argument is irrelevant and insensitive. Clearly we will not agree on this. I agree that the medical professionals telling the trans women not to supplement their hungry babies is disgraceful, it's my biggest issue with LLL!

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.

What @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g said.

Heartbreaking lll was a huge part of my life 20 years ago this is so wrong

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.

“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.