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then is withdrawn can result in a "downer."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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