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

Dunno Delph. Rather beyond me.

Yes you are absolutely right. A baby sucks hard and uses a lot of their limited energy to do so. They need nutrition. A mother’s best chance at establishing breastfeeding and an adequate milk supply is if their baby is sucking at their breast as frequently as possible.

You are also correct that medically induced male breast secretions (galactorrhea) are not the same at colostrum. I continue to wait for evidence of the nutritional contents of galactorrhea.

There's some sick bastards out there. Don't believe a word of it.

Yea gasp. Anyone who does know a bit about basic bf knows that to be the case.

That gives me the most unsettling feeling.
I think this is one of the craziest things I've read.
it's many years since I fed but I can't imagine using the word erotic to describe it.

Bet your bloody life it was a man who wrote that shite. Who were these breastfeeding mothers they asked?!! 🤨

And the reason I ended up with oversupply after following poor advice on hospital is that they were concerned my very underweight baby would over exert himself trying to feed.

Though he only^ put on weight when I stopped pumping and supplementing and he just fed on demand - which is the whole point for a newborn.^

So if you saw a child being abused you'd walk on by and not do anything because it doesn't affect you? Nice to know.

That NCT stuff is tripe. I've BF for 8 years across 3 babies, peer counselled and talked to so many women online and in real life and no woman has ever told me they found it erotic.

Yes, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g supply will absolutely be interrupted, and no man will be making essential colostrum. You see threads on here all the time about trying to give baby the first couple of weeks as colostrum is SO beneficial, indeed it's a necessity for BF babies. I fed my DS throughout pregnancy with his brother. He voluntarily weaned just before birth as my milk changed so much back to colostrum for the new baby. It's pregnancy led and no protocol will replicate it in a man.

Apparently a side effect of the pandemic for bf infants was fewer issues with low weight gain as mums just fed fed fed and weren't being interrupted by the hectic demands of modern life.

Many other cultures have the 40 days confinement thing for mum primarily so she can recover but mainly establish her supply with baby, uninterrupted.

Well the transwoman hasn’t of course gone to the bother of actually giving birth so it’s not quite the same as a woman breastfeeding after giving birth when like all mature female mammals the natural bodily response is lactation.

It's been a very long time, but I still remember vividly struggling with breastfeeding when my daughter was born. She was delivered by emergency CS and I had thought that would rule out breastfeeding, but a wonderful student midwife had read my birth plan and when I was brought back to the postnatal ward she said kindly but firmly 'I see you want to breastfeed, well, we'd better get started with that then' and she put my daughter to the breast. Daughter and I were both pretty dopy so there wasn't much sucking going on, but it was a symbolic gesture, and I never looked back after that in terms of my keenness. Took a few days to get over the soreness and so on and to get her latching properly, but we got there, and in the end I fed her for 15 months. It made all the difference when my son was born that I knew I could do it, because I'd done it before, and it was all pretty straightforward that time.

The argument about adoptive parents inducing lactation always comes up and it pisses me right off. I am an adoptive parent to two, and I have never, ever known of any other adoptive parents having induced lactation in the UK - and if they did, it would not be because that is what’s best for baby.

Fully trained (but lapsed) ABM breastfeeding counsellor.

First point - that latch is ALL wrong. You never shove your hand on the back of the baby's head and ram it onto the breast. That's how you get cracked and bleeding nipples and I'm surprised this couple's "queer lactation expert" didn't know that.

You can induce lactation in men, or in women who have not given birth. Adoptive parents have done it, but obviously it's much more common in women. Any woman who has breastfed will have experienced that "let down" feeling when you walk past a screeching newborn in the supermarket. Women who have not given birth can induce lactation with a lot of work, men can also induce lactation with a lot more work. But yes, drugs are involved and you have to question who is benefitting from it. I am a MASSIVE advocate of breastfeeding and believe it's the most natural choice for babies - except in this case, where it isn't the most natural choice.

And how come it's breastfeeding when a transwoman does it, and chestfeeding when a woman does it?

We had a bit of latching issues but the sore nipples, mastitis and cramping were absolutely not erotic.
Unless there's another meaning to erotic.

Apologies if this has been said before but I found this article, retweeted, by Owen Jones last night, with it being called "beautiful." Interestingly, he seems to have deleted it today.

I remember seeing a documentary about a European woman who travelled to Asia to adopt a little girl. She was still BF her toddler son and was desperate to BF the little girl, but the child was maybe a year old. She was expressing into a spoon and then attempting to latch and it was such uncomfortable viewing. Certainly wasn't for the child's benefit. And no, she was not British.

Repulsive, self indulgent and quite frankly delusional wants of transwomen. I blame the professionals who plant the seed that it is a real possibility. It's not! Chilling that any cases/experiments have no reference to the nutritional value of the substance that is artificially produced and no mention of the infant's health.

I experienced the opposite. Baby born at the beginning of the pandemic. Minimal visits from health visitors, no support groups or baby weighing clinics.

I fed and fed and fed but my milk had failed and it wasn't picked up because of the lack of support. Was told over and over than 'cluster feeding is normal' and 'the amount of women's milk which fails is tiny'. We ended up in hospital because baby had dropped two centiles and was failure to thrive.

@WarriorN I am by no means a TRA. My concern with the clear revulsion at this particular photograph is that there's such widespread revulsion at breastfeeding generally. I live in an area with one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the country - and the UK in turn has the lowest rate of breastfeeding globally. One experienced HV I saw said I was the ONLY woman she had ever seen EBF to 6m. Breastfeeding is not seen as natural by most of the population. So arguing this photograph represents something more unnatural will seem quite weird to many people. For many we're all freaks who probably get off on sticking our nipples into babies mouths. I have had women say to me they couldn't let a baby touch their breasts because they are for sex and many women report finding the return of sexual sensation to their nipples as oestrogen levels rise actively disturbing. Posters upthread are describing a TW reporting similar experiences as a paedophile. This is actively unhelpful to breastfeeding. Suckling stimulates the nipples and feels good, equating that to paedophilia implies that the primary motivation for doing it is sexual and the writer does not describe that.

Personally I identify more closely with the TW who wants to experience breastfeeding than with people with that attitude so in answer to the question why is there a need to do this? I guess my view is why not. It seems very natural to me that people with a strong urge to nurture their young baby would want to suckle it.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g is clearly right about the baby's bodily autonomy - for this to be OK we do have to be sure the baby's wellbeing is protected too. In this respect I am reassured by the fact that even when taking some extremely hardcore drugs my doctors were always pretty sanguine they'd pose little or no risk to any of my children. There are drugs that pose a risk when breastfeeding, opiates in particular. Obviously I have no particular knowledge about the risks associated with cross-sex hormones but in the case studies cited the TW have sought medical advice. But it is a valid concern.

I appreciate your concern about abuse in the relationship between the parents or between parent and child. I do work in research around safeguarding - transwomen breastfeeding oddly is not a variable that turns up in our datasets much! Maybe it could be a soft indicator for risk of abuse. But I would query whether the causal pathway is as psychological as you suggest - i.e. TW are narcissistic and prone to controlling behaviour in relationships. There are all kinds of other factors that are going to make children in households with samesex parents or with transparents more vulnerable including social stigma, impacts on self-esteem. Higher levels of mental health need in same sex parents. Associations between family dysfunction and lower educational attainment. I am sure the association will be there, but explaining the causation will be much harder.

Also there is no need to give the baby formula in this case. The baby has a female parent - a mother - who is buzzing with oxytocin and let-down reflexes and needs to be feeding her baby to get her supply going.

What @RinklyRomaine said. With bells on.

@PenelopePipPip

But what is the reason for it? You said 'why not?' Well, people have already explained why not.

This has nothing to do with women breastfeeding. I breastfed and do not agree with this, I'm sure many others here are the same.

If you have sexual stimulation feeding your baby, it may be time to stop.

I'm on Breastfeeding support groups on Facebook and have seen multiple women post about how this is amazing and I just have to scroll past and consider leaving the group as so many of them are going that way 😥 it just can't be right, surely. Women can breastfeed, men cannot ...

This is so true. The amount of women heartbroken because they don't seem to be producing enough milk but dream of breastfeeding their baby and now a transwoman can do it and everyone cheers and looks past those women who are told to give up and use formula. I'm so sorry you didn't get the right support. 😥