A transgender woman can breastfeed her baby thanks to a scientific breakthrough

(Image credit: iStock.)

published 14 February 2018

In a scientific first, doctors were able to enable a transgender woman to breastfeed her child, The Guardian reported Wednesday. A report in the journal Transgender Health published last month detailed the first documented case of "induced lactation in a transgender woman," The Guardian explained.

Doctors were successfully able to spur lactation in the 30-year-old woman through a combination of hormones, chest stimulation, and a drug traditionally used to treat nausea. The woman, who was not identified in the report, had been on hormone therapy for six years, The Guardian said.

The doctors used a method commonly employed to induce lactation in cisgender women who had not been pregnant but who still want to breastfeed. They gradually increased the woman's doses of estradiol and progesterone — female hormones that were already included in the woman's hormone therapy — and used a breast milk pump to physically stimulate her chest. The final ingredient was a drug called domperidone, an anti-nausea medication that commonly causes lactation as a side effect.

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Shivani is the editorial assistant at TheWeek.com and has previously written for StreetEasy and Mic.com. A graduate of the physics and journalism departments at NYU, Shivani currently lives in Brooklyn and spends free time cooking, watching TV, and taking too many selfies.

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