I asked a while back if any of you sighed when you sat down to nurse, but didn't explain why I wanted to know.  Here it is:

The "D-MER mom" resolved her symptoms almost totally with a dopamine reuptake inhibitor (Wellbutrin), which allows better utilization of dopamine.  (The higher our dopamine, the lower our prolactin, and vice versa.  Reglan increases prolactin by decreasing dopamine, but it seems at this point that the D-MER moms have too little dopamine to start with and do better with more dopamine even if it means less prolactin - her supply wasn't damaged, for instance, by pseudoephedrine.)

Anyway, the last bit of her D-MER to go was an urge to sigh.  On the other hand, it could be that it wasn't the last of the D-MER symptoms but was instead the first of the too-much-drug symptoms; she now has an urge to sigh deeply many times a day, so she's trying to get a lower dose of Wellbutrin.  Who knows, at this point?

But it's made me think about sighing in general.  It turns out that *quite a few* of you remember sighing as you sat down to breastfeed... but your *justifications* for it were all over the map.  Often, when we have an automatic response of some kind we rationalize it - without realizing we're doing so - to fit our circumstances.  Some of you sighed "because" you weren't looking forward to using sore nipples, some "because" you were content, some "because" it was your only chance to sit down.  The only consistent part was that many of you sighed.

Which got me to thinking about the "love-sick sigh", including the loud fake sigh we give when we see our latest "heart throb".  It's how we signal love, especially unrequited love.  Does it connect with sighing when we sit down to nurse?  Is it truly a sign of love?  Is there something about high oxytocin or high prolactin that makes us sigh?  Do we unconsciously help *raise* our prolactin (through lowering our dopamine) or help *trigger* oxytocin release by sighing?  How does it relate to yawning?  No one seems to know exactly why we do either one.  But I'd love to know if "the love-sick sigh" is a universal thing, across cultures.  My guess is that it is.  Does it connect to breastfeeding?  Dunno...

If anyone has ever found anything that accounts for the oh-so-common mammalian phenomena called yawning and sighing, I'd love to hear!  Sigh...

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

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