Stories of transwomen and their personal experiences of #inducinglactation!

[pombear]

I know this board has covered this before.

But GetBoober, a US-based organisation, whose apparent main objective is supporting mums who are needing support in getting breastfeeding established have recently tweeted this:

twitter.com/getboober/status/1118122981102899201

We loved reading Katelyn Burns article sharing anecdotal stories from three #transwomen and their personal experiences with #inducinglactation!
Katelyn does note that a lot of ways for trans women to induce lactation are still very experimental.

The article from Katelyn highlights three anecodtal stories of males keen to breastfeed their children.

Kaia, 30:
My wife and I have a really nice basis for comparison, because we went from two boobs to four boobs when I transitioned.

Including Brettany who is 56:
My body will never allow me to conceive and bear a child, and I've always wanted to at least be able to nurse one. That was the main motivation for this. The secondary motivation was that I wanted to bring my breasts to full maturity.

And Dr Laura, who is 68:

When I was in my late 50s, I decided that I was going to try this to see if I could do it. I underwent a drug regimen and used a breast pump fairly regularly. And gosh, within about a month, I guess, I was producing milk!

After I got to the point where I understood that I could lactate, I didn’t pursue it further — I didn’t have any need to maintain lactation. It’s a supply and demand sort of thing, so I stopped the medication and the pumping and of course I dried up. It was just super, super neat.

I think it strongly reinforced my sense of womanhood. I had some great inner satisfaction in knowing that I could do what a cisgender woman could. It was very important to me, and I’m proud and happy that I did that.

My only thought on this is - where are the children, the babies, centrered in this narcisstic objective? I'm trying to find a similar analogy to this - transwomen trying a touch of endometriosis, or a touch of ovarian cancer? A bit of mastisis? A sense of womanhood through PND? (Though I'm sure somone will find someone claiming it under the trans-umbrella)

Actually, I had another thought. GetBoober what the fuck are you doing?

It’s a boob fetish - using a baby as a prop.

The drugs those poor babies must be ingesting!

I've seen stuff on this before, a specific case in Australia where the mother apparently wasn't interested in breastfeeding but the trans woman father did. It was all very disturbing.

This particular part of the trans ideology strikes me as especially sick really. It's child abuse as it no one knows what ingesting those drugs does to a newborn.

It turns my stomach.

Until those children reach adulthood, no one is found to know how the hormones given to the men will affect them.

Until someone says “do not do this, it is causing your children harm”, narcissistic men, and those enjoy this fetish will continue doing it

Ugh, they're completely nuts.

I remember on an internet board way back in the mists of time a trans claiming he could breastfeed a baby (in his 50s too). I guess he was the vanguard, when there was me thinking he could only be unique in his delusions.

"great inner satisfaction" Ewwwww.

It doesn't sound like they are lactating to me - more like producing gunk and that seems to have taken a month No mention of any let-down or anything. You'd think they'd like that?

Total validation fest.

The following statements were made in reference to this study:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779241/

The patient was taking Clonazepam for anxiety www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK501209/ which comes with the following guidance when breastfeeding: Monitor the infant for drowsiness, adequate weight gain, and developmental milestones, especially in younger, exclusively breastfed infants and when using combinations of psychotropic drugs.

The patient was also taking Zolpidem for insomnia www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK501265/ which comes with the following guidance when breastfeeding: Monitor infants for excess sedation, hypotonia, and respiratory depression.

The patient followed a regimen previously shown to induce lactation in women, including increased estradiol and progesterone, and was told to use a breast pump for five minutes per breast three times a day.

She also obtained an anti-nausea drug called domperidone from Canada that is used off-label to boost milk production.

Domperidone is not approved in the United States, due to the US Food and Drug Administration's concern that it may lead to cardiac arrest—and its unknown risks to breastfeeding infants.

But it's too early to say whether the transgender approach is safe and nutritious for infants, said Madeline Deutsch, clinical director of the University of California, San Francisco Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

"I wouldn't do it," said Deutsch, herself a transgender woman and parent to a six-month old baby who is breastfed by Deutsch's wife, who was also the gestational carrier.

So what we're really talking about here is yet more experiments on children to support an extremist agenda. Why is this not considered a human rights violation against the children?

Including Brettany who is 56:
My body will never allow me to conceive and bear a child, and I've always wanted to at least be able to nurse one. That was the main motivation for this. The secondary motivation was that I wanted to bring my breasts to full maturity.

Why is no one understanding how important risk assessment and safeguarding is for children? And how is it okay to support a transwoman who wants to breastfeed to bring their boobs to full maturation?

Breastfeeding isn't about sexual gratification, feeding one's ego, attaining full breast development, or desire of any kind beyond providing safe and nutritional sustenance to a growing and developing child.

I'd love to have a baby and breastfeed the little one. If I had to take synthetic hormones to induce lactation or furthermore use an off-label unregulated drug to do so the baby would drink formula. Because kids aren't lab rats, and because my desire to breastfeed is irrelevant juxtaposed against a child's health and development.

I may be wrong because these days I am starting to doubt my own sanity but don't you need milk ducts and milk glands to produce actual milk? I can see how taking hormones like progesterone and oestrogen would lead to secretions in the breast area but without milk ducts or glands, how can it be milk?

This link from Stanford Children's Health says that a 'mammary ridge' begins to develop in female foetuses in the womb and then in puberty milk glands begin to develop. If all of that infrastructure has to develop for human females to lactate and nourish a baby, how can male breast tissue replicate that without it?

" Breasts begin to form during fetal development with a thickening in the chest area called the mammary ridge or milk line. By the time a female infant is born, nipples and the beginnings of the milk-duct system have formed... Once ovulation and menstruation begin, the maturing of the breasts begins with the formation of secretory glands at the end of the milk ducts. The breasts and duct system continue to grow and mature, with the development of many glands and lobules "

If the above is the case, why is everyone including medical professionals lying about it so some middle-aged male-born person can feel 'inner validation'?

I suspect the above, whilst solely talking about women, is not stating that iy applies solely to women. My understanding is that men have milk ducts and mammary tissue and domperidone ( a regulated drug in the uk used for heart conditions and the reason they discovered it induced lactation is because men who took it started to lactate) is used fairly commonly in the uk to induce lactation in women who struggle to produce enough milk.
Not a medical professional but a peer supporter and I work with a lactation consultant who often prescribes this where indicated.

But I agree wth the posters above that this is a grotesque exercise in self gratification and any children put anywhere near this behaviour are not being adequately safeguarded

Just to clarify - the description of the development of milk ducts in females only discusses females. It does not say it is only in females. Sorry. Had a big family shindig today and am struggling to be coherent after making nice with elderly relatives whilst simultaneously trying to give the impression my children have some idea of appropriate behaviour!

Domperidone is more of an reflux med, it is contraindicated for some people with specific heart problems. It is unusually well studied in women, babies and nursing mothers and actually we do know how drugs behave by knowing their profile-protein binding, molecular weight etc. Domperidone alone isn’t much of a problem and many women have benefitted from its boost to prolactin levels.

The rest is still batshit

Jesus. My DD is 22 weeks pregnant and can’t have rare steak, soft cheeses, alcohol, ibuprofen and god knows what else but a man with a sick fetish can take hormones/drugs in order to pretend to feed a baby and that’s ok? Where’s the vomming emoticon when you need it?

What will be interesting is how these poor poor kids develop, if they meet their childhood milestones and do not show signs of any ill effects by puberty I'd be very surprised.

I hope they are monitored but as the child is barely mentioned, as they are not the patient, I fear that no one will be watching and they will be considered collateral damage - along with all the other kids and young adults in synthetic hormones and/or puberty blockers.

The doctors doing this are responsible AF. They are enabling child abuse.

Have they analysed the milk being produced?

Does it matter? It’s not about the baby or it’s needs is it. It’s all about the men.

Aren't they just doing experimentation with different drugs to give themselves galactorhoea? Except in this case it is specifically for some form of gratification or validation?
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/galactorrhea/symptoms-causes/syc-20350431

Also, I find this sentence disturbing, and dehumanising of the actual woman who gave birth:
"I wouldn't do it," said Deutsch, herself a transgender woman and parent to a six-month old baby who is breastfed by Deutsch's wife, who was also the gestational carrier.
Gestational carrier.... To use that term to describe the mother of a baby who is married to the speaker in the article.

So males also have milk ducts and mammary glands, 1MillionSelfies? I didn’t know that. I know men also have breast tissue because men can in rare cases get breast cancer but I had always assumed that male breast tissue, if it develops for whatever reason, was just fatty deposits rather than ‘breasts’ with the same structure that mammary glands have. I guess that could mean that these trans women are producing milk, like women, but it still doesn’t sound like something that is without health consequences, for either the trans woman or the baby.

I tried to get domperidone from my GP when my dc was in NICU and I was struggling to pump but I wasn't allowed it.
I did establish bf but didn't drink or take anything stronger than an occasional paracetamol while I was feeding them. Even when I had PND, I agonised over taking the ADs.

Well it does Lordproffekko. If babies are drinking it we have to know exactly what it is.

Is it even milk? I don't know.

There is nothing wrong with Domperidone as a drug for increasing milk supply in certain circumstances. It is very safe for women and babies, and it can be extremely effective in the right circumstances. I wish it were available to women who could benefit from it in the UK.

The issue is not the drugs, it's the creepy narcissism of these men who have no need to induce a TINY milk supply in the first place, because these babies already have mothers perfectly capable of feeding them! The last story of the TW who decided to try it "just to see if I could", is one of the weirdest fucking things I've ever heard.

The 'gestational carrier' bit really bothers me. Makes me think about red uniforms.

It strikes me also that these people don't want to breastfeed for the baby. The baby is a mere prop in their fantasy of themselves.

I bfed all 3 of my DC and the joy in it for me was not so much the lactation so much as what it meant. That I could provide food v and comfort for my babies from my body that had also grown them. It was about my babies not me.

I think this sort of thing only confirms for me that some men really do see women as costumes for them to put on and not people at all.

7days - I meant does it matter to even have it anysed - it has to laced with drugs and making a baby ingest these just for your own jollies is just blooms wrong.