I thought this might make for an interesting discussion, though I'm sure it's been discussed before. Over the summer I was still in the mindset that I desperately needed to do something to make money, and I stumbled on a website that allowed women to sell breast milk. I really looked into it, and worked out the logistics and everything. I knew it would be a long shot, since I was not going to sell breast milk without disclosing that I was transgender, and that would severely limit who would consider buying it. But I thought there might be a certain class of men that might be interested, and the site did allow male buyers. All I had to do was successfully induce lactation...
So that was the plan at first, but I pretty quickly realized it was not going to be easy for me to produce enough milk to be worth selling. It took a long time to induce lactation to the point where I was producing more than drops, and even then I could only manage maybe an ounce a day. I tried domperidone but I wasn't able to take it for very long, because it made me feel horribly depressed and unmotivated. Eventually I decided to give up, but all the effort I put into it didn't go to waste. By the time I stopped, I'd had a very significant increase in both nipple size and sensitivity, and it's difficult to describe, but my breasts felt more "real" after having done this. I'd always been a little disappointed in the amount of breast development I had, and I ended up mostly ignoring them or even feeling borderline dysphoric when I felt my chest and there was hardly anything there. Technically I have a B cup, but on my chest that's just barely adequate, and my right side is also noticeably smaller than the left. Inducing lactation helped me to think of them as being real functional breasts, despite their flaws.
So that could have been the end of the story, but the thing is (it really seems like this should be more common knowledge too, because even a lot of cisgendered women don't seem to know this), lactation doesn't just automatically stop when you quit stimulating it. Even when I wasn't trying, my breasts still filled up with milk after two or three days, and got sore enough that I had to empty them. I guess the key would have been to just deal with the soreness for a while, because whenever you empty them it just causes them to make more. But I really didn't mind emptying them every few days, and so I just kept on doing it. And then recently I added progesterone to my HRT regimen, which is known to be a factor in development of milk glands, and I wanted to try fully stimulating lactation again and seeing if the supply would be better. I'm not sure if it was the progesterone, or just keeping my breasts in shape by keeping the lactation going for as long as I did, but the amount I was able to produce increased significantly. I managed maybe 2-3 ounces a day on average. Still not exactly overwhelming, but perhaps a good sign for future development?
I don't really know if I want to sell the milk anymore, but all I can think now is that I am actually going to be able to breastfeed my children if/when I have any. Probably not enough to go without formula, but it's still a pretty amazing thing. We have to miss out on so many things cisgendered females are able to do purely because of their anatomy. We can't menstruate (well, that might not be the worst thing to miss out on), we can't become pregnant (how bad could morning sickness be?), we can't give birth (I mean, that part isn't so bad as long as you take the painkillers
). But breastfeeding is one thing that we don't have to miss out on, and I for one am glad I'm not going to.
Has anything else here tried inducing lactation recently who wants to share their experiences?
