Breastfeeding men project

[Bittermints]

There was a report on this on the BBC London news just now. A young female design student has produced a kit to enable men to breastfeed. She did finally mention near the end of the segment that not a single man has yet tested it. She wants to issue men with some sort of pump thing and domperidone, the drug which is banned in the US but which the US transwoman who 'breastfed' a baby last year bought in Canada. (To be fair, I think I read that domperidone is used here to help women with breastfeeding issues, but not men.)

Her rationale is that men often suffer from depression after a baby is born because they feel excluded and one of the things they struggle with is that the mother is feeding the baby and they can't.

My answer to that is Get over it! This is how it is. If the mother wants to breastfeed, your role as her partner and your baby's father is to support the mother. If she doesn't want to breastfeed, then you can get stuck in with bottle feeding. Either way, you can change nappies, bath and dress the baby, take the baby out for a walk, give your partner a chance to sleep, make your partner a cup of tea and a sandwich, do your share of the tidying, cleaning, cooking, shopping, washing up, laundry etc etc etc.

What you don't need to do is take hormones which would be passed on to the baby through this 'milk'. FFS.

Breast milk is food, not emotional adhesive.

And how do the mothers fit into the Frankenstein nightmare?

I have a 10 day old that I’m breastfeeding, I’m not expressing as apparently that affects supply. If the horror show of an experiment fails will the mother be left to pick up the pieces?

Incidentally, about 25 years ago we knew an American bloke who had a contraption which I think essentially allowed him to fix a tube to his nipple so the baby could 'suckle' - but at least that was either pumped proper breast milk or formula. 'Problem' solved, without dodgy pharms, a quarter of a century ago.

will the mother be left to pick up the pieces?

Yes. As per fucking usual.

I saw this and was mega wtf @dh

Men get pnd same as women (they can get depressed sure but don't call it pnd please)
Men feel left out
Way to stop them feeling left out is chestfeeding
No mention how this works re establishing /maintaining supply
Or if the drugs are safe for baby
Or why if dad is depressed cos he feels left out then answer is to disengage baby from mum breast and hand it over for some hormonally iffy man milk
No mention of why this is best solution rather than 8 trillion easier ones
Inability to use word 'breast'
Women can get pnd but mumble mumble missed that but not v important anyway probably

I said to DH if they said right here's these bulls we've fed them a load of drugs and milked then who wants some there would be deafening silence

But apparently for human baby this is fine

I’m going to go against the grain and hypothesise that this hip young design student wasn’t really thinking of new fathers and their user needs at all, but if her own squeamishness at the idea of being just another mammal that could get pregnant, give birth, and lactate to feed its young. If she can get a bloke to do it too, she’ll feel more equal.

Apparently she’s not realised that formula would do most hands-on dads just as well. (Bless.)

If men are suffering postnatal depression how is drugging them with weird hormones supposed to help them? (never mind the baby)

IME there is so much to do with babies anyway, that any hands on man would have loads of opportunities to bond. There is always baby sniffing

I was waiting for the presenter to ask about the effect of the hormones on the baby, but instead she asked about the possible effects on the man

What Jelly said. Men do not need to feed babies in order to bond with them. Sensible men realise that it is not all about them and muck in with a good share of the baby care and- hey presto, the bonding happens of its own accord.

Incidentally, I loathe the appropriate of post natal depression to apply to men. I don't doubt that some men suffer depression after the birth of a child, nor that it should be taken seriously, but what they experience is so fundamentally different from what a woman experiences that it cannot possibly helpful to either men or women to elide the two.

This is ridiculous.
But PND in dads is real. Parenthood is a big adjustment for both parents, as are new additions to the family.
If a dad is struggling with mental health issues after a new baby, the answer is not in dosing him up with medicine so he can produce milk? WTF? Bottle feeding, bathing, playing, cuddling, all of these are ways to bond with baby, without trying to change nature.

There was a thread about this a while ago, I may be able to find it...

This design student is a very good self promoter. This is all fantasy and nonsense, she knows nothing about the science and the medical requirements for this. It would never be possible, approved or recommended.

I doubt this student is aware of the deep-seated sexism at the heart of this idea. Women are different to men. There is no need to try to simulate what women do, men can support and facilitate.

Why is bbc reporting on this? Nothing else of value to report?

I hadn't realised this was in the news a few months ago too. As you say, AssassinatedBeauty, she seems to be a very good self-promoter, but how depressing that she doesn't seem to have grasped (a) the baby's needs are more important than anything and (b) the mother's ability to breastfeed could be compromised by this daft scheme.

Ever since giving birth I've been unable to run without wetting my pants. My husband never complains but I know it makes him feel left out and depressed. Is there anything you can do for him Msdesignstudent?

I'm not sure that you can say PND is real in men. The natal surely refers to the women who physically bore the child, she is the 'natal' person who is referenced., and the fact that the child cane from her body is surely relevant to various physical changes and challenges that can contribute to PND.

Not saying that new dads can't face significant mental health issues, but calling it PND seems a bit like those men who say "we're pregnant."

the mother's ability to breastfeed could be compromised by this daft scheme.

And that this would tend to increase the mother's chance of developing PND. But who cares about that.

Perhaps we need a new name for PND in men and a new acronym?
They may not have all the hormones contributing to mental illness, but they still have impacts on sleep, dealing with a screaming baby and emotional wife, having to go back to work (in most cases) after only 1-2 weeks off work, working while sleep deprived etc, dealing with the shit the patriarchy tells them they should or shouldn't be doing as dads when their natural instincts is to be nurturing?
What should we call it?
NPDA? New Parent Depression and Anxiety? NBAD? New Baby Adjustment Disorder? PAD? Parental Anxiety and Depression?

Medical professionals call it PND in both men and women. The causes may be different (hormonal for women, situational for men), but both parents need support. Organisations like PANDAS recognises this.

Richard Madeley describes it as, absurd

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6694823/Richard-Madeley-demonstrates-use-male-BREAST-pump-Good-Morning-Britain.html

Am I the only one who read the thread title and thought to herself, Christ, don't we do enough for them already? Men need us to breastfeed them now, too?

Again, not disputing that men need support. Obviously lots of people are geared towards making sure that isn't forgotten because we've got a silly arse situation here where research time and funding has been spent on the pointless vanity notion of them 'chest feeding' a baby to prevent them feeling bad.

I'm sure the phrase PND is used for women and men, because it's economical to do so. My opinion is that it would be better to call the male phenomena something else, but its just my opinion. I'm sure men won't suffer more from me having an opinion.

@BruceNosh, DH did exactly that with our 3. It meant I could focus on breastfeeding and given that all 3 are cuddling him now, I think he has bonded with them. He didn't need to bf for that.

I had domperidone prescribed off label for milk supply with my second baby (born with posterior tongue tie and cow milk protein intolerance) and you have to take it at 10 times the recommended dose for it’s usual gastric use. I only had it prescribed for a short time and had to use an at-breast supplementer (SNS) as well, although I did manage to power through and eventually fed her til she self weaned at just gone 3.
I don’t think I would’ve gone the same route if I hadn’t had self-confidence from breastfeeding a previous baby until gone 2 AND really good support locally from both the infant feeding coordinator and a peer support group. It was a massive faff, and using an SNS made me look like a right weirdo in social contexts - if I hadn’t had an allergy baby I probably wouldn’t have persevered with it.

Domperidone use has been linked to heart problems in men (at the much smaller, recommended dose) so this is a ridiculously reckless thing to promote, for both infant and father.

Better to promote skin-to-skin contact between dads and babies but that won’t get you on the telly.

Grinitch

Grinitch that would’ve been funny if breastfeeding fetish wasn’t an actual thing (not envy).