On 29/02/2012 18:10, Sandra Jean Taylor wrote:
> Posting with permission; I have a friend that suffered from severe PPD.  Now that her daughter is 10 1/2 months old she is coming out of her PPD fog, but is having anxiety and fear of returning to her previous state because of natural weaning tendencies.

What is her reason for feeling this way?  Is it sadness at the thought 
of losing a relationship that means a lot to her, or is it concern over 
what she's read over weaning triggering depression, or what?

>    Her daughter is only nursing 4x/day or so because the mother works full-time and provides milk for daycare.  If the mother sees her daughter midday at daycare the daughter is not interested in nursing, but rather "hanging out" and playing.  The mother is fearful this behavior is early signs of weaning.  I have assured her it is not and is a normal progression.  The mother states she is sad that her daughter does not want to nurse at lunch time.  I do not want to see her spiral back into depression as she has fought so hard to feel better.
>
> Firstly, does anyone have any experience with or know of any research about depression from weaning?

My understanding (somewhat out of date) is that the evidence on this is 
scanty - weaning is known to be associated with changes in hormonal 
level that theoretically *might* be associated with triggering 
depression, but there's no hard evidence that it does so.  Any research 
articles anyone's seen showing a definitive link (or lack thereof) would 
be interesting.

>    Secondly, how would you reassure this mother that this is normal behavior?
>
Both Kellymom and the author of 'Mothering Your Nursing Toddler' state 
that children go through a period around 9 - 15 months of age where they 
tend to lose interest in nursing as there's so much other interesting 
stuff going on.  They recommend offering the breast regularly as a way 
of stopping children from self-weaning at this age.


Best wishes,

Sarah Vaughan

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