On a crisp fall evening in 2015, Jacey went on a date with a voluptuous brunette at a hip restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, before taking her home for a nightcap. After a drink, the two tumbled into bed together, having sex until the rosy tinge of dawn cracked through the spaces between her blinds.
Afterwards, the brunette went on her merry way, leaving Jacey in bed to replay the night’s memories. But as she was laying there immersed in the afterglow, she noticed a strange sensation coming from her nipples. She reached up to touch them — they were wet.
“I looked down and noticed a few tiny droplets of white fluid on my nipples,” she tells me. “It wasn’t enough to soak my bra or anything, but there were a couple of pinpricks of what looked like milk on each one.”
She lay there in shock as she stared at the fluid. Was she lactating? Instantly, her mind flashed to her mother as it struggled to connect the dots. “My mom lost her battle with breast cancer a few years earlier and the disease runs in our family, so I thought that had to be it,” she says. “Of course, I read all the WebMD pages and thought I was dying.”
Terrified, Jacey made an appointment with her primary care physician. However, the doc immediately ruled out breast cancer after learning she was leaking from both breasts, not just one. She also axed pregnancy from the list of possible causes — Jacey mostly slept with women, and hadn’t been anywhere near a penis for long enough that a surprise pregnancy couldn’t have been it, either (although she did take a pregnancy test just to rule out immaculate conception).
According to her doctor, that left only one explanation: “Have you been having really good sex lately?” she asked.
Jacey thought back to the night before. It had been pretty good — the brunette had treated her to her first-ever girl-on-girl 69, and she’d had a “really hot” clit ring. It wasn’t necessarily the best sex or strongest emotional connection she’d ever had, but the things they’d done together had felt fresh and new.
That bit of info seemed to complete the puzzle for her doctor, who explained Jacey’s breast were probably leaking because of galactorrhea, a condition that causes spontaneous lactation in the absence of pregnancy. According to the Mayo Clinic, galactorrhea occurs in response to a head injury, a tumor or a hypersensitivity to the hormone prolactin, but it can also be the result of vigorous exercise, certain medications and — you guessed it — high-octane sex.
However, while galactorrhea that stems from such causes affects 20 to 25 percent of women and a small amount of children and men, there’s no data to quantify how often non-pregnant people lactate specifically in response to pleasure. This Reddit thread and these one-off message board posts make it seem relatively common, but since there’s no international data repository of people whose boobs leak after particularly rowdy sex, it’s difficult to know how “normal” it is.
As for Jacey, given that nothing seemed to be wrong with her, her doctor suggested she learn to see her lactation not as a problem, but as a “feature” of her sexuality. She told her to enjoy her sex life and sent her off with the all-clear. Almost immediately thereafter, Jacey texted the brunette to tell her she must be some kind of “orgasm wizard” for making her lactate.
“We were both pretty excited to learn your boobs could be that turned on,” she says. “I was worried she’d be grossed out, but she thought it was hot.”
Since then, Jacey has lactated after sex or masturbation a handful of times, but only when it feels super good. Really intimate, emotionally connected sex doesn’t cut it — the sex has to be physically intense and somewhat unemotional for her nipples to leak.
Usually, she’ll lactate for a few days and always just a few drops at a time. It’s not necessarily pleasurable when the milk comes out, but she says it’s not unpleasant, either. Mostly, it’s just slightly wet.
However, while she only lactates in response to sexual pleasure, Jacey’s still struggling to understand why. Her breasts aren’t particularly sensitive, and though she enjoys them being pinched or bitten, she doesn’t really engage in the type of “excessive manipulation” that would explain why they lactate. One possible culprit, per her own online investigation: Galactorrhea is more common in women who take birth control and smoke a lot of weed, both of which she does.
That said, she’s not too interested in investigating her case of sexual lactation further. After all, in the grand scheme of things, it’s been rather unobtrusive, somewhat random, and not something she really thinks about.
“A percentage of sexually mature women just happen to produce milk when their boobs or lady-parts are stimulated,” she says. “Guess I’m one of them! Bodies are wild.”
Isabelle Kohn
Isabelle Kohn is a sex and relationships journalist, educator and consultant who, for some reason, keeps writing about livestock instead. She writes features and long-form pieces for MEL, usually without the help of Clippy.
