"Human Milk" ffs

[SecondUsername4me]

Not linking to DM (clicks) but an article on the app today talks about how one NHS trust has said that hormone fuelled milk produced by transwomen is equally as good for baby as breastmilk produced by women.

The director says the terminology Human Milk should be used as both milk types are equal.

In the letter, the Medical Director claims 'there is clear and overwhelming evidence that human milk is the ideal food for infants', referring to both breast milk and the 'induced lactation' of biological men

Ffs these poor babies.

The £££££ that has been thrown in faking shit for men so they can cosplay womanhood while actual disease and illness is left to fundraise for its own research is sickening.

And they definitely weren’t the thing that encouraged me to keep going when I was finding breast feeding isolating and difficult.

Leaving aside benefits, I find it odd to connect the process to identity, because I found that so much of the practical process of pregnancy and child birth was completely irrelevant to my identity.

Pregnancy happens regardless of whether you even want children, and from that moment onwards I think most of it is out of your control.

Agree. For me I'd say it sort of destroyed my identity. I struggle to take the notion of identity seriously since experiencing motherhood and how little society and biology gives a shit about how you feel about yourself.

You are not alone.

A male pursuing the aim to make an infant suck a secretion from their nipples is actively taking from the breastfeeding relationship in ways which could significantly affect the success of feeding. Women are not machines, successful breastfeeding is a two way relationship

This is a very good point.

The more a lactating mother* feeds her baby, they more readily her milk flows, and the more milk is produced. If breastfeeding is interrupted (eg the mother is very ill/ needs hospital treatment which stops her feeding her baby for even a few days) it can have an impact on the production of milk - sometimes breastfeeding can't be resumed at all.

Additionally it has been shown that nature not only changes the composition of breastmilk as the child grows and develops, but also adapts it to the sex of the infant. Milk of breastfeeding mothers of male babies has a different nutritional composition to milk from mothers breastfeeding feeding female babies. (I'm not sure how this works out with the mothers of male/female twins, but certainly with singletons this has been observed in a number of studies.)

*I use the term "mother" for ease, and as meaning the natural mother of a baby. I am aware that some adoptive mothers are able to breast-feed babies, and also that there may still be women who are wet nurses in this day and age, I don't know, but I'm not trying to exclude them.

Yes they know. It's on the little piece of paper that comes with the drugs under pregnancy warnings in every box.

It's the same with lupron that is used as "puberty blockers" that is claimed to be safe and reversible.

If you look at the warnings on the labels possible side effects can be brain swelling in children, heart attack symptoms, stroke like symptoms, seizures, muscle weakness, loss of bowel or bladder control, psychotic episodes, back pain, ....

And that is what they know without any existing studies on long term effects of brain development etc because those practically do not exist. There is a recent one with only a few subjects that shows IQ dropped 10-15 points. For reference an average IQ is about 100. If you have 135 you are in the 1% of really smart people, if you have 75 you are Forrest Gump. So 10-15 points is huge.

https://www.drugs.com/lupron.html

It gets more and more shocking the more information is revealed. @OneMorePlant

This is worse than experimenting without knowing what the risks are - it is pushing an agenda knowing that it is seriously risking the health of children.

It is shocking.

The side effects of these drugs are acceptable for the use they are approved and designed for, mainly men with end stage prostate cancer who don't have very long to live.

These should be nowhere near healthy children.

Because there's no part of them that actually wants to be a woman. It's stops short of all of that. You don't see them campaigning for women's issues, or taking on the mental load, or understanding women or having any affinity with them at all.

Quite the opposite.

The woman and the womanhood that they want is an invention that has no basis in reality.

That have not the slightest interest in, or understanding of, what breastfeeding and childbirth actually entails for a woman.

I also feel weepy having read all of this thread, plus the links elsewhere. It is over 30 years since I breastfed our two boys, but I remember it well. DH and I were just talking about the role of fathers in breastfeeding: caring for the mother and child, other children, taking on household tasks etc. These are all things that he did, plus giving me encouragement and support.

This is the role of the father, NOT breastfeeding!

And the benefits to long-term maternal health are really important too. It's known that breastfeeding helps women lose surplus weight gained in pregnancy, and reduces the risk of cervical, uterine and ovarian cancers amongst other things.

@LentilFaculties ... your posts are beautiful and touch on topics that make me cry... thank you.

I'm sorry you found it isolating.
I bf both DC - stopped with the first when she bit me (drew blood) at about 11 months - i was pregnant then so it was ok for me to stop, it was DC decision i felt.
I bf DC2 until about 18 months, then a bit longer just to settle for bedtime.

Not one second of that was about me. Even though I knew there were benefits to me, in terms of recovery from birth etc, they were very much secondary benefits. And if I'd thought for one second it would be better to stop, reduce or whatever - i would have done it in a heartbeat.

That professionals write about it being good for the trans woman in terms of gender identity? just reinforces the narcissistic tendencies.

We are reluctant to discuss the effects that breastfeeding has on attachment and brain development of babies and the hormones of mothers for fear of the impact this might have on women who cannot breastfeed or on fathers, who do not share this function.

Healthy attachment is supported by breastfeeding and the hormones impacted in mothers serve the purpose of facilitating them to be attached mothers. It is not the only factor, but it is part of our design in the same way that the increase in oxytocin in males when they hold their babies also builds that capacity for attachment. We are also reluctant to discuss the fact that primary attachment is with the female parent, for fear of causing harm to those who are unable to perform this for whatever reason that may be. Only in extreme and cruel situations do we ever test this 'hypothesis' because of the potential harm to babies.

Yes.

It's like me pretending to be a man, and deciding that, because I can't get an erection, that I know what it is like to be a man suffering from erectile distinction. I wouldn't have the same hormones, societal expectations, biological drive, sense of masculinity and "what it is to be aman" etc etc. yes Incan love my life "as a man" call me Fred etc but I only know the experience of being a woman pretending to be a man. And for me to say "this is how men must feel" is ignorance.

Well we have had TRA's showing up on here to argue with an infertile woman, claiming that they are also an infertile woman, because they cannot conceive. You know, being male and everything.

Well we have had TRA's showing up on here to argue with an infertile woman, claiming that they are also an infertile woman, because they cannot conceive. You know, being male and everything.

Yes, I remember a few of them, but the one that made a vile comment to R0wantrees really stands out.

Logically there must be something biological driving mammals to feel attached to their young, and a human baby needs more care than other mammals.

From the point of view of the individual woman/cat/mouse etc.etc it makes more sense to abandon your young at birth, if you put your own interests first.

The evolutionary drive to put your children’s need first is what keeps them alive. (Other evolutionary paths are available and some animals never know their young but we aren’t those animals).

Obviously it’s also helpful from an evolutionary point of view if other people can take over the care of your children, (see also penguins) but they also need to put the child’s needs above their own.

Oh yes. I remember those threads as well. Not just a single instance.

I'm not entirely sure where to put this offering from Mole, but it seems reasonably relevant:

https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1759626198433316912/photo/1

Although I am in complete agreement I do just want to add 2 things.
1 skin to skin with dad's is also good for attachment
2 fathers hormones do change in parenthood, with reduced testosterone for around a year after the birth. If they are involved. Also men in long term relationships have lowered testosterone compared to themselves when they were single. So there are some male changes too linked to skin to skin and being a parent, it's not completely true to say all on the woman.

Those are not reasons to promote excreting whatever toxic pus a man can squeeze from his moobs into a baby.

Quite.

A couple of things that have been bouncing around in my head.

When I became pregnant there was an unwritten but undeniable contract between our DD and us. We committed to put her needs before our wants and, in return, she made no commitments at all.

When DD was small and wouldn't sleep, she would happily curl up in the space formed by DH's naked arm and chest. I don't know if it was his smell, heartbeat or breathing rhythm but she loved it.

No of course not, but some posters seem to think fathers have no role at all and that is not true on an evolutionary level. Testosterone drives sexual behaviour and competition so it is interesting to know that it lowers when you enter a long term relationship and more still when you have a child. I believe there are also differences in playing that link to these levels depending on if the child is male ir female but would have to look up the studies to be sure on that last point.

BTW though, no studies at all have found that tw have lowered testosterone without drugs so its not an identity thing but a biological response to brain chemistry called love (all from oxytocin which is also released in sex as well as any skin to skin extended contact).