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Dad Tries to Stimulate Lactation in Hopes of Breast-Feeding Future Babies

by Amy Hatch (Subscribe to Amy Hatch's posts)
Sep 4th 2009 11:52AM

74Comments

Filed under: In The News, Weird But True, Breast-Feeding

brest pump

A Swedish dad is using a breast pump to stimulate lactation. Credit: Photodisc

Brace yourselves, ladies, a new battle just broke out in the war between the sexes -- a Swedish man is planning to pump his breasts every day until December in an effort to produce breast milk.

Yes, you read that right: Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, will bust out the breast pump at three-hour intervals, and he's even pledging to do it in public, according to the Web site The Local. As a full-time student at Stockholm University, he told The Local, he's "going to have to pull the pump out during class."

"But it doesn't really bother me if it makes people uncomfortable," he said, according to the story. "If they have issues with it that's their problem."

Bengtsson, who has a 2-year-old son, is chronicling his adventures in lactation on a blog, The Milkman - One Drop at a Time, hosted by Swedish TV8, according to The Local. The experiment will also be documented by the television station.

So just what would inspire a 26-year-old man to try and produce father's milk?

"Anything that doesn't do any harm is worth trying out," he told The Local. "And if it works it could prove very important for men's ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage."

He added that he did not attempt to breast-feed his son, but has not ruled out giving it a try with any of his future offspring.

Shocked? You're not alone. Bengtsson told The Local that his quest for lactating breasts has generated some pretty strong reactions. "Some people think it's completely sick," he said.

One Swedish endocrinologist said that if Bengtsson sticks to his plan, he may be able to produce enough of the hormone prolactin to cause lactation.

However, she suggested that perhaps he and other men like him could instead offer their children a breast just for comfort.

"Men often have trouble finding things," Sigbritt Werner, professor of endocrinology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, told The Local. "And if the mother is out, the child is screaming and they can't find the pacifier I'm sure there are a lot of men who give their baby their breasts."

We'd like to see the look on that mom's face when she gets home.

No word from the mother of Bengtsson's child. Maybe she's already cried over the spilled milk. Or lack thereof.

Tags: babies, breastfeeding, man breastfeeding, ManBreastfeeding, men

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