Transgender woman is first to be able to breastfeed her baby
A 30-year-old transgender woman has become the first officially recorded to breastfeed her baby. An experimental three-and-a-half-month treatment regimen, which included hormones, a nausea drug and breast stimulation, enabled the woman to produce 227 grams of milk a day.
"This is a very big deal," says Joshua Safer of Boston Medical Center, who was not involved with the treatment. "Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular."
The transgender woman had been receiving feminising hormonal treatments for several years before she started the lactation treatment. These included spironolactone, which is thought to block the effects of testosterone, and progesterone and a type of oestrogen. This regimen enabled her to develop breasts that looked fully grown, according to a medical scale that assesses breast development based on appearance. She had not had any breast augmentation surgery.
When her partner was five-and-a-half-months pregnant, the woman sought medical treatment from Tamar Reisman and Zil Goldstein at Mount Sinai's Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City. Her partner had no interest in breastfeeding, she explained, so she would like to take on that role instead.
The milk produced was supplemented by formula because a baby typically needs 500 grams of milk per day at 5 days old.
Related: President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Says Transgender Women Could Give Birth
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:37PM (11 children)
Congratulations to the scientists that worked to make our human existence more meaningful, by taking a man who was dressed / cut up to be a woman to produce milk.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:12PM (7 children)
Probably better funded and more money in it than doing something useful like curing cancer or ALS.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:29PM (6 children)
Any and all additional understanding in to human biology should be welcome. It might not be something that directly affects you, but it affects others.
There is big money to be made by the medical industry in gender-reassignment related procedures. Expect to see more such advances in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:06PM (1 child)
Extremely unlikely, considering the statistical insignificance of the numbers of transvestites wanting cosmetic surgery and hormone cocktails.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @02:45PM
Just wait until the massive advertising campaign. It will happen.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kell on Sunday February 18 2018, @04:45AM (2 children)
There is also a serious need to research methods to help genetic women produce milk better. The techniques used on this woman are directly applicable, since she was using her own biological breast tissue and glands. It's a fascinating development and it could help thousands of babies in the future, whose mothers cannot (for whatever reason) produce enough themselves.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:09AM (1 child)
FTFY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @09:41PM
FWYFFY (fixed what you fixed for you)
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:23AM
Advancements that save people from dying to cancer are far more important than advancements in the field of medical vanity.
AC's argument is quite valid, we have our priorities completely bonkers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:44PM (2 children)
Lactation isn't difficult to achieve. Any woman can do it. I've done it accidentally. I'm not sure why this is even news.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 17 2018, @10:04PM (1 child)
I met an American guy in Shanghai who could lactate by expressing his nipple. He was an otherwise normal guy, too, not somebody who took hormones or the like.
I did honestly find it disturbing, though. The haze of erguotou and second-hand smoke from the ball of hash they had bought from Uighurs in Inner Mongolia didn't buffer the experience enough.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @03:07PM
When that happens to normal males, that is usually a symptom of a serious medical problem (such as major organ failure). From your description, that seems quite likely.