I believe any discussion of breastfeeding as a part of human sexuality would
be deficient without a discussion of oxytocin and prolactin.

Here's a page with more links to abstracts on oxytocin than you could
possibly want:

http://www.oxytocin.org/refs/index.html

Niles Newton and others have been telling us for a long time that women bond
to men they have orgasms with, men they give birth naturally with the
support of, and children they nurse, so it sure is the "love hormone".

There's less research on the effects of nonpathological prolactin levels,
but I like to call it the "earth mother" hormone -- it seems to induce
serenity and nurturing.  I rather miss who I was when nursing.  I'd love to
do a study of nursing mothers of infants who also have toddlers versus
bottle feeding mothers of infants who also have toddlers.  Wonder what the
relative stress hormone levels would be like.  In my case, I believe any
negative effect on my libido of being anovulatory for several months was
offset by the lower stress hormones.  For me, stress hormones are the big
libido-crusher.

Betsy Liotus wrote a great article taking into account a lot of the aspects
of functioning as a breastfeeding woman in relation to her family for the
March-April 1996 issue of "New Beginnings":

http://www.lalecheleague.org/NB/NBMarApr96p36.html

I'm not sure how I'd put it to a college student audience, but I believe
oxytocin and prolactin are precious natural resources, and the prevalence of
evils from divorce to domestic violence to child neglect to shaken baby
syndrome suggests to me that we ignore their effects at our peril.

Ruth Piatak, LLLL
Plano, TX

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