28 10 / 2011
This Won’t Squirt A Bit - Part 2
The doctor looks up, first at me and then at my wife. “I erm… suppose I could… ah… take a look at it.” His face is now a vivid shade of hot pink. “Would you mind erm… removing your top please? And umm… your bra.”
We seem to have accidentally stumbled into a terrible John Hughes coming-of-age movie. I start to wonder if our doctor is actually a doctor, and not just a nervous teenager here on work experience. Or perhaps he’s the lucky winner of a hospital radio competition. Have the NHS cutbacks been that bad? Are they plucking random idiots off the street, handing them a stethoscope, a copy of FHM and asking them to cover for the Boob Specialist?
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27 10 / 2011
This Won’t Squirt A Bit
“Is there anything else you want to ask?” enquires the young, male doctor. Mid-twenties probably. 27 tops. I have officially reached that point in life’s great conveyor belt of clichés where you start guessing your doctor’s age.
“Yes,” replies my wife. “I want to talk about my boobs.”
This isn’t the response the doctor had been expecting. In the preceding 20 minutes we had discussed our baby’s weight, his sleeping habits and the persistent rash around his neck, not to mention the obligatory five minutes of ‘weather chat’. There had been no indication whatsoever that anyone wanted to talk about their boobs.
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20 4 / 2011
Moobfeeding
Prepare to have your tiny minds blown. I know you’re not reading this column expecting your entire belief system to be irrevocably shattered but that’s what I’m going to do, damn it. Should have thought of that before you started digging around the shadowy back pages of Stylist’s website. To those of you who want to opt out, better do it now. There’s no shame in clicking the back button and living your life in blissful ignorance. To everyone else, let’s get freaky.
Ok, I’m going to assume that anyone who’s read this far is prepared to join me down the rabbit hole, so here’s the deal: men can breastfeed. I promise you I’m not making this up. Not only do we have fully-formed mammary glands but we also have breastfeeding ducts. Our brains produce both prolactin and oxytocin, the hormones needed to create breast milk. And, hold on to your hats here, we have nipples. There are recorded cases of men breastfeeding their children as far back as 1858. As recently as 2002 a Sri Lankan man discovered he could lactate after his wife died leaving him to raise their baby daughter on his own. In the Aka Pygmy society, a community of 20,000 people in Central Africa, fathers commonly suckle their children. Once again, I promise you I’m not making this up.
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