A transgender woman in the US has become the first known in the world to be able to breastfeed her baby.
Doctors at the Mt Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York made it possible for the 30-year-old woman to breastfeed the baby that she had conceived with her partner for six weeks.
The baby was fed for a further six months but with added sources of nutrition other than the breast milk.
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The patient, who has not been named, decided to try and breastfeed their child as their partner, who conceived, decided that they did not want to.
Doctor Tamar Reisman pioneered the scientific breakthrough.
She put the trans woman on a specially concocted type of hormone replacement therapy using Domperidone, which has not been approved by the American Federal drugs Agency, for the three and a half months leading up to the birth.
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The drug is widely available in Canada and so the patient and the doctor made the decision to import it.
Over a three month period she gradually started to produce more and more milk, and two weeks before the baby arrived she was producing eight ounces a day.
In a report published in the journal Transgender Health, the authors wrote that they believe it is “the first formal report in the medical literature of induced lactation in a transgender woman.”
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Doctor Reisman said that she was happy to have helped her patient achieve her wish.
“We are happy that the patient shared her experience with us, and we are happy to help our patients build happy, healthy, transgender families.”
“We know that breastfeeding has a lot of benefits. That doesn’t mean that all patients have to want to breastfeed, but for this patient, in particular, it was the right choice and I’m happy we could help,” she added.
