Breastfeeding Issue For Trainee Male Midwife

A Bournemouth University student training to be a midwife has complained after being barred from attending a breastfeeding drop-in session.

30 year old Chris Butt was told it was because some new mums are sensitive to having a man present at the women-only sessions in Southampton.

Chris is one of just 132 male midwives in the UK and decided to complain about it in an article for 'Midwives', the magazine of the Royal College of Midwives.

He wrote:

"I didn't believe for one minute that I would be turned away from breastfeeding groups.

"Do the facilitators of such clinics think I practise midwifery in some magical way where I don't see intimate parts of women's bodies? Do they think I stand behind a screen as a baby's head is crowning, shouting out advice on when to breathe?

"I wonder how many women who attend drop-in breastfeeding clinics have ever been asked if they mind a male student being present. Not many, would be my prediction."

Bosses at the National Childbirth Trust said he was offered the chance to attend alternative classes with more than one room and where dads were also invited.