Hi Diane,
Something that Kerstin Uvnas Moberg spoke about at he LCGB conference in the 
UK was that oxytocin has a downside...there is an up but then also a down 
associated with the withdrawal of oxytocin. I spoke to her some more about 
this after the conference and any situation where oxytocin is abundant and 
then is withdrawn can result in a "downer." This may be what the mothers you 
are communicating with are experiencing. Another situation where this may 
happen is where a mother has had a baby die. She has experienced high 
oxytocin when baby with mum (remembering that oxytocin is also released with 
skin to skin), abrupt withdrawal with death of the baby. Obviously the death 
of the baby is a great source of grief but there can be a link to oxytocin 
such that for some time after when the mother orgasms during sex (high 
oxytocin followed by abrupt withdrawal) that the grief resurfaces (eg 
sobbing uncontrollably).
I'd suggest contacting Kerstin to ask about it, she's very nice! I think 
there's room to write some more about these things so that woman have some 
idea what the heck is going on!
Karleen Gribble
Australia

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Diane Wiessinger" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 5:39 AM
Subject: bad feelings with MER (long)


I've been in e-mail contact for the past week with a woman who experiences 
the following feelings with every milk release:

  a.. Hollow feeling in her stomach
  b.. Ickyness
  c.. Yuckiness
  d.. Revulsion to food
  e.. Desire to curl up and disappear
  f.. Guilty feelings
  g.. Ill at ease
  h.. Bothered (not irritable, but bothered)
  i.. Emotional upset
  j.. Apprehension
  k.. Grief, a sort of sadness
  l.. Introspective
  m.. Desire to be alone
  n.. Fear of failure or of having failed
  o.. Not "nausea" like with morning sickness or the flu,  but ready to 
throw up anyway; she has even gagged before
  p.. Discouraged, broken down
  q.. Weepy/tearful
  r.. Worry
  s.. Difficulty concentrating
  t.. Exhaustion
  u.. Oversensitivity
  v.. Overreaction and devoting attention to tiny details
  w.. Restlessness
  x.. Inability to cope
  y.. Something in the pit of her stomach (and yet hollow at the same time)
It's a ghastly list, and she has felt it with every MER from the time her 
third child was a few weeks old.  It subsides within about 90 seconds.

She is trying to find an answer, ***and has contact information for nearly a 
hundred other women*** who are experiencing the same thing.  They don't 
report a difference with pumping, breastfeeding, or spontaneous MER; it's 
the hormone release itself that seems to cause it.  Each of them thought she 
was the only one to have such an experience.  I realized, in wandering 
through my own files, that I asked about this on behalf of a local MD nearly 
2 years ago.

The mother I'm working with finds that behaviors and substances and 
circumstances that work against milk release also help lessen the feelings 
with let-down, but don't eliminate them.  Another mother finds she can 
predict by 5 seconds when she'll start to see milk in her pump's bottles, 
because she has this same sweep of negative sensations.  The reaction does 
not in any way seem to connect to past or current life experiences; it seems 
to be an automatic and unavoidable response to some specific hormone's 
release (we've been saying oxytocin but of course we don't know for sure). 
Women do seem more likely to develop it after at least one normal lactation 
than to have it with a first and then not have it with subsequent children. 
The lucky ones find it lessens and may even clear completely as their baby 
grows.

The typical responses the women get are "you must have been abused, whether 
you remember it or not", "good coping skills should take care of it", "it's 
extremely rare".  None of those seems to be true.  A high proportion of 
these women continue to breastfeed, and it doesn't seem to impair their bond 
with their child... but imagine if every single let-down brought with it 
such a surge of dark feelings!  It makes their lives extremely difficult.

I am *stunned* that this many women face this, and that it can be as extreme 
as they report.  This is not the mild nausea that many of us have seen.  As 
the woman I'm working with says, "If I'm thinking about fixing dinner when 
it happens, I know immediately that I've chosen all the wrong foods." 
Whatever she's thinking when her milk releases, the thoughts "turn to the 
dark side."  Standard HCPs and endocrinologists don't seem to be of much 
help to them, and I haven't been able to offer any good suggestions either. 
The woman I'm working with hasn't been able to get anyone to test for 
oxytocin or vasopressin, the two most likely issues in our minds.  This 
simply seems to fall outside what everyone she knows is comfortable working 
with.

It seems to be much more common than we would guess; most of these mothers 
said they had never reported it to anyone because they knew what kind of 
response they'd get.  And I think they're right; I gave a non-helpful answer 
to that doctor 2 years ago.  I've now written him, asking him to extend my 
apologies to the mother on whose behalf he asked, and I'm trying to do much 
better this time.

Any thoughts?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.normalfed.com

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