First Documented Case of Transgender Mother Breastfeeding

Doctors report that a regimen of hormones, an antiemetic drug, and pumping gave the woman enough milk production to feed her baby exclusively breastmilk for six weeks.

Written byKerry Grens
| 1 min read

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ISTOCK, SWEETLEMONTEATwo New York physicians report that, for the first time, a transgender woman has been able to breastfeed her child, and did so for six weeks.

The 30-year-old patient of theirs took hormones and an anti-nausea medication for three months, after which she was producing eight ounces of milk per day, the doctors reported in Transgender Health this January. Two weeks later, her partner gave birth and the baby’s growth and development progressed well during six weeks of exclusive breastfeeding from the transgender mom, after which the parents began supplementing with formula.

“There have been self-reported cases online of transgender women trying DIY regiments to induce breastfeeding, but this is the first case of induced functional lactation in the academic literature,” one of the doctors, Tamar Reisman of Mount Sinai hospital, tells The Guardian.

Boston Medical Center’s Joshua Safer, who did not treat the mom, tells New Scientist that transgender women ...

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Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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