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.
The breakthrough could give hope to transgender women everywhere who hope to one day breastfeed their own children, the doctors said. Read more at The Guardian.