Don't Say 'Breast Milk': Midwives In UK's Sussex Told To Avoid ‘Old-Fashioned’ Terms For Anatomy. Know Why

Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust's new policy tells staff that term ‘breast milk’ could be replaced with 'human milk', 'breast/chest milk' or 'milk from the feeding mother or parent'.

A pregnant patient lying on back and a doctor doing the ultrasound test | Photo: Getty

New Delhi: Midwives in UK’s Sussex have been urged to choose their words carefully when dealing with pregnant transgender patients. They have been discouraged from saying 'vagina', or ‘breast milk’ to avoid trans patients getting upset hearing the "old-fashioned" gender-specific terminologies, Daily Mail reported.

The guidance comes as part of the Sussex health policy on perinatal care – previously called maternity services – for transgender and non-binary people, the report said, and quoted the care guide from the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust as saying: “Some individuals may have preferred terminology for their anatomy.”

The Daily Mail report said it emerged last month that the trust has put in place a policy under which midwives and obstetricians were told the phrase ‘breast milk’ could be replaced with 'human milk', 'breast/chest milk' or 'milk from the feeding mother or parent'.

Similarly, the care guide said, some people might be more comfortable talking about 'front hole' or 'genital opening', rather than 'vagina'.

According to the report, the staff have been encouraged to record such requested terms on a document called 'My Language Preferences', which lists anatomical parts such as cervix, uterus and breasts alongside a column to write the preferred words.

The guidance went on to say that maternity care is designed as a “women-only service”, and that may not serve the needs of trans and non-binary people who identify as neither male nor female.

It said all pregnant transgender patients should be treated as per their “self-identified gender” rather than their sex at birth. It was suggested that such patients should be offered “pronoun stickers” to wear, so staff knows how to address them.

Midwives Not Happy With New Guidelines 

The advisory, meanwhile, has not gone down well with with the staff at th trust, the Daily Mail report said.

Quoting a midwife, the rport said a number of maternity staff are unhappy though they are scared to speak out. 

“It's a policy that relates to very few people and they think in some ways it's ridiculous but because of the climate at the hospital they dare not say anything,” the midwife quoted above said, not wishing to be named. 

“There can be a risk in using words that are not anatomically correct because these are ambiguous,” the report quoted Kat Barber, founder of campaign group Sex Not Gender Nurses and Midwives, as saying.

The policy, however, is not new. A BSUH ‘Mission Statement and Rationale’ dated December 2020, posted on the trust website, talked about ‘Gender Inclusive Language in Perinatal Services’, which contained a list of words for which new terms had been suggested, elaborated with previous and new examples of sentences using the old and new terms. 

The list included expressions and terms such as ‘breastfeeding’, ‘breastmilk’, ‘maternity’, ‘maternal’, ‘mother’, ‘father’, and even ‘she’ and ‘her’.

Another document dated January 15 and titled ‘Perinatal Care for Trans and Non-Binary People’ included words such as ‘vagina’ and the other guidelines mentioned above.