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Man Attempts to Survive on Nothing But His Wife’s Breast Milk
September 23rd, 2011
Photography via donthaveacowcurtis.blogspot.com
Meet Curtis. According to his blog (update: the blog seems to have been removed) Don’t Have a Cow, Man, he is a 6’4, 185-pound man on a mission. His mission is simple—he wants to see how long he can live exclusively off of his wife’s breast milk. Curtis’ wife Katie, who is both a doula and a childbirth educator, has a stockpile of unusable, pumped, perfectly good breast milk. Through some simple calculations, the couple figures that Curtis needs to drink about 66 ounces of breast milk a day, which roughly equals out to a 2,000-calorie intake.
Curtis seems to be doing this both a way to use the breast milk and as a social experiment to see if he can do it, and to see if he can help calm his many digestive troubles. He is not working in conjunction with a medical professional, he is just—literally—using his gut as a guide. On day two, he was singing the praises of his breast milk diet. He reported that he didn’t wake up hungry and he had almost no digestive trouble at all. He did, however, have a tremendous amount of gas.
This idea is a very interesting one. We know that “breast is best” for baby, but can it be best for humans of any age? Perhaps Curtis will discover something groundbreaking about adults and breast milk.
On the other hand, this whole experiment begs the obvious question of why the couple didn’t donate this giant freezer’s worth of perfectly good breast milk. They mention in several blog posts that milk banks won’t take the milk because it’s old. But we can’t help but wonder if this is really the case. Surely there are women out there who are desperate to be able to feed their babies the breast milk they may not be able to on their own. So is it really about promoting breastfeeding, or is it just a way to get attention?
What do you think about Curtis’ idea/blog? Is it a great experiment, or just a strange mission?
UPDATE: This story has taken an interesting turn. Check out our update on the breast milk diet controversy.
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