A transwoman feeding their new born baby with their own milk..

[Soubriquet]

A website has said they have lost many followers with supporting this.

I just don’t understand why this is being promoted. If men in general were able to breastfeed children, why is this not being encouraged among married couples? Im sure plenty of men would be willing to step up and share breastfeeding with their partner.

It can’t be healthy for a baby to be fed this way, as surely the transwoman would be taking multiple type of hormones in order to remain transitioned?

Link

Saw this on a student midwife forum, lots of students saying it’s fine and that there wouldn’t be a supply problem,etc. 😮

This is the protocol being used. It has been used with mothers who have children by surrogacy or adoption and by lesbian couples where both want to breastfeed.

www.canadianbreastfeedingfoundation.org/induced/regular_protocol.shtml

Men can lactate. There are certain medication and medical conditions that cause lactation in men as an unwanted side effect. It is called galactorrhea. I used to work in an area of healthcare that used these medications and saw males lactating - although in those cases, it was a very unwanted side effect leading to discontinuing the medication.

I'm not up to date with bfeeding. What would be the benefit of this?

No men have managed to feed a baby enough milk - however it's produced - to sustain a baby. No one knows what the drugs do in a male body.

There is no benefit whatsoever to the baby. Which begs the question - who is it for?

That isn't true

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

The thing is, breastfeeding is a dyadic act. There are so many articles about how responsive the human body is to the baby, how the body will ramp up white cell and antibody production when the baby is ill, how when it’s hot the body will produce more watery milk. The levels of prolactin and how it varies according to the circadian rhythm. The sleep hormone that’s released during the night so Mum will sleep better after breastfeeding in the night. The milk receptors that get laid down during the first two weeks of breastfeeding.

I just don’t think this is something you can even come close to replicating with drugs and protocol.

There have been reports of TW taking the drug domperidone to stimulate lactation. They wouldn’t be able to lactate otherwise because milk production is stimulated by childbirth. They don’t produce anywhere near enough to exclusively feed a baby (but plenty of fantasists and activists claim otherwise).
It’s ridiculous and not good for the baby, but if we say so we get called transphobic.

So if this was available why was I you'd to give up as my body wasn't producing breast milk? Why is this protocol not available to born women? I wasn't even told this was an option just give the baby formula

Have these secretions been tested in any way for safety? If not, does no medical authority dare to point out that this is medical experimentation on a human baby?

"That isn't true

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

This honestly sounds like Dolly the Sheep.
(Or was it a cow).

Can you share studies where they've tracked the health of the baby? (I note the study was in 2018 so there may be some indications by now as to whether or not the liquid produced by the chest has had any Heath implications).

I'm sure I saw a TV programme years ago where a man managed to lactate by taking the relevant drugs/hormones. I can't remember if he actually fed a baby at the end though. And it's possible I imagined it!

So the trans woman can be a pretend proper woman of course. Oh you meant benefit to the baby? Hmmm.......

That’s the thing

I didn’t bond too well with dd, so even though I struggled to try and breast feed, it wasn’t working. I was fine with bottle feeding

I had a much better bond with ds when he was first born and I still couldn’t breastfeed properly. What did I get? “Oh just feed him
a bottle”.

I really wanted to breastfeed. I physically ached to do it, but I didn’t get the right support and ended up having to bottle feed.

In the end, he had CMPA so needed prescription formula but that is besides the point.

If I was were trans, would I have gotten more support? It certainly appears to be that way

Apart from saying spironolacto can pass through breast milk that report is just about if it's possible to induce lactation and if a transwoman can.
Which part shows the benefit to the baby?

As mentioned before it is available but it takes months so not really suitable for someone who just gave birth 😉 however it is used for women who are adopting, for example.

To make the adult feel good.

What is noticeable about the article about a transwoman inducing lactation is no direct evidence of it bar someone apparently witnessing "a few drops". If there were 8oz being produced daily prior to the arrival of the baby, why was some of this not photographed, tested for evidence of what it constitutes of in comparison to breastmilk, what hormone levels it contained, what levels of the several medications being taken were present in the liquid etc etc.

And as others have mentioned there's no investigation into the well-being of the baby and the birth mother.

A single case study. Effective for 6 weeks:

A 30-year-old transgender woman who had been receiving feminizing hormone therapy for the past 6 years presented to our clinic with the goal of being able to breastfeed her adopted infant. After implementing a regimen of domperidone, estradiol, progesterone, and breast pumping, she was able to achieve sufficient breast milk volume to be the sole source of nourishment for her child for 6 weeks

One of the most popular protocols for induced lactation in women is successful in 30% of them. I should think a certain amount of serendipity and possibly survivor/publication bias has gone into this case study of one individual.

But we know men can lactate. There are lots of cases reported of galactorrhea - whether this is a good way to nurture babies is a moot point although historically it has probably happened, alongside widespread wet nursing.

Male breast tissue isn't structurally different to female breast tissue they just have less of it. If you stimulate the production of breast tissue with female reproductive hormones and then give biological males prolactin too they can lactate -its not a freaky dangerous fluid. The hormones in it are the same as those biological women will have after giving birth.

I am a little sensitive on this as a biological woman who breastfed three children whilst taking loads of medication. None of this, like most medications, had been shown to be safe during breastfeeding and all of them were known to have teratogenic potential in pregnancy. We could redefine my breastmilk as 'drug-induced secretions' if you like but the medical opinion was that the benefits of my milk still outweighed the disadvantages for my children.

The newborn is only being 'experimented' on to the same extent as all babies who receive breastmilk from parents who have to take medication whilst breastfeeding which cannot be tested for safety. But in this case we can have good reasons to believe exposure is likely not to be dangerous and effects will be reversible - babies flooded with maternal oestrogen from birth typically show secondary sexual characteristics like breast development for the first few days of life which reverse as hormones stabilise

Having had a quick look, there doesn't seem to be any studies at all about the infant's well being at all. The two main studies in this area seem to be -

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779241/ (initial study by T Reisman which states some worrying side effects on the person taking one of the drugs in the protocol)

internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-020-00308-6 (this includes a case of a 55 year old transwoman who induced lactation with no intention of feeding an infant).

Reisman also says this in a Guardian article -

'However, Reisman said the case has also attracted questions about whether men could now breastfeed. “That, implicitly, is saying that you see transgender women as cisgender men, which is transphobic,” she said.'

www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/14/transgender-woman-breastfeed-health

I'll refrain from commenting on that one.

what the fuck is in that “milk”?

Why was my comment deleted?? FFS. Because I said it was a f*tish?

I breastfed all my children and couldn’t even take cold/flu medicine as it isn’t considered safe! Ridiculous. That poor baby. God knows what it’s drinking

Just another way of the menz appropriating womanhood.

Fuck what the long term impact is on the baby, as long as the adult is validated that’s all that matters. Anything else is pure literal actual violence.

I’m so fucking tired of this shit.

@HermioneKipper you couldn't take cold/flu medicine assuming you mean decongestants not because they are dangerous to the baby but because they are incompatible with breastfeeding - they dry up secretions whether that is mucus in the nose or milk in the breast. By contrast I was prescribed a number of pretty nasty disease modifying drugs, chemo drugs and various other things to suppress my immune system whilst breastfeeding my babies because even if tehy did cross into my milk my babies would be at more advantage getting my milk than they would from the low level of exposure.

It isn't helpful for breastfeeding women to perpetuate the idea that breastfeeding is incompatible with longterm medication use, in many cases the advantages to mother and baby outweigh the small risks even when considering drugs which are known to be contraindicated in pregnancy itself. Women always need to make decisions in conjunction with their doctor. But breastmilk isn't a sacred fluid that must be unsullied.

Exactly what I thought. If this is safe and good for babies, get all the men on it immediately.