Male Nurses

With a baby on the way, my wife's naturally spent a lot of time thinking about breast feeding. As usual, I introduced one of those random facts I picked up somewhere, and as usual, she argued with me about it: whether or not men can lactate. Well, the record is clear: I'm right. Which makes me glad I didn't accept the wager terms she offered, that I would be "allowed" to do half the feeding.

It's actually not all that uncommon, though I've found more citations of the facts behind it than number of occurences. Here's the ones I found:

Historically, male lactation was noted by the German explorer Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt prior to 1859, who wrote of a 32-year-old man who breastfed his child for five months. It was also observed in a 55-year-old Baltimore man who had been the wetnurse of the children of his mistress.
Compleat Mother, Fall 1996 issue

We’ve known for some time that many male mammals, including some men, can undergo breast development and lactate under special conditions. We’ve also known that many otherwise perfectly normal male domesticated goats, with normal testes and the proven ability to inseminate females, surprise their owners (and probably themselves) by spontaneously growing udders and secreting milk....Lactation, then, lies within a male mammal’s physiological reach.
"Father's Milk" in Discovery, February 1995

And in 2002, Pravda and some other international papers reported on a Sri Lankan man who nursed his daughter following his wife's death.

So, it's possible. What causes it? Basically it takes production of a hormone called prolactin, which as you might guess is much more prominent in women, especially just after childbirth. Men can produce it, however, and apparently attempting to nurse will encourage production of the hormone in a surprisingly short time. I wouldn't generally recommend this, though -- the enlargement of the breast that happens seems to be at least partially permanent.

There was also a Baby Blues sunday comic on this. Frankly, I'm with Darryl on this one.