The antenatal class dedicated to our mental health was one of the more memorable ones. We read out fictional testimonies about a mother’s condition and decided whether she was experiencing a bad day, depression or “baby blues”—the infamous hormonal helter-skelter that happens when a mother’s milk comes in four days after birth. Nothing, though, was mentioned about the other end of breastfeeding. We were left to figure that out by ourselves.
I stopped feeding my son days before he turned 18 months old. Like many parenting decisions, it was one I had worried lightly about for a good while only to make very quickly in the moment. I’d been away for a few nights and, on the morning I came home, realised with bittersweetness that the feed we’d shared minutes before I left would be our last.
I’d read a little about the low mood that can accompany weaning through one of the scant handful of parenting accounts I follow on Instagram, and braced myself. When a week passed with no symptoms, I thought I’d got away with it. Three days later, I started questioning why I was still alive.
It took me 48 hours to realise that the frequent tears, malaise, inexplicable rage and utter sadness were my weaning hormones kicking in. I was also waking every two hours through the night—while my son and husband slept—and struggling to get back to sleep. As the days passed, I’d begin to feel more like myself, only to be caught out by the hormones again. It seemed relentless.
Trying to work out why I felt quite so unhinged was difficult, but feeling like I was totally alone with it was infinitely worse. Plenty of my friends had recently weaned their children. We’d freely talk about the most intimate parts of our matrescent bodies, but the conversation about our minds had been far more muted. Discussing the “baby blues” was part of postnatal life, but I’d never heard anyone mention post-weaning depression.
On a biological level, breastfeeding triggers the release of prolactin and oxytocin, both of which help to foster feelings of calm, connection and love between a mother and baby. When you stop breastfeeding, however, these hormones are no longer produced in the same quantities. Meanwhile, oestrogen levels increase, often sparking the (vicious) return of your menstrual cycle.
“There’s a hormonal shift when breastfeeding ends, and that shift will usually be more profound if the end was sudden,” explains Lucy Ruddle, who has written several books about breastfeeding, including the recent Breastfeeding Grief, and is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. “In addition, on a very primitive level, many experts think that it’s likely a part of the brain or the subconscious views the sudden cessation of breastfeeding as a sign that an infant has passed away, pushing that wave of sadness even harder. We tend to see this far less when a baby or toddler has slowly stopped feeding over a few weeks or months.”
Professor Amy Brown from Swansea University attests that “there hasn’t been a lot of formal research on the physical and psychological symptoms of stopping feeding, but women often describe being hit by feelings of sadness and loss, even when they were happy and ready to stop feeding. Some talk about feeling tired or irritable, very similar to feelings of PMS. And there can be physical symptoms to manage—fullness or soreness as milk production decreases and the risk of mastitis – all while you’re maybe back at work and trying to juggle.”
And that juggle is crucial. Ruddle explains that the lack of societal support in helping women to meet their breastfeeding goals can worsen the effects of stopping, causing the risk of postnatal depression to “skyrocket”. It’s also, like many aspects of the bodily processes involved in childrearing, nothing new. “Women have been talking about their deep sadness and distress about their breastfeeding journeys ending or going badly for as long as we can remember. It’s only been recently that we’ve actually acknowledged that these feelings absolutely are grief,” says Ruddle. “Breastfeeding is important to many people on a deep level they struggle to explain. It can form part of our identity in early parenthood. And then for it to not work? It can leave an emptiness that we can’t put into words.”
The circumstances around weaning can have considerable impact on how a woman feels once she’s stopped, Brown says. “We’re a lot better at recognising the distress and loss women can feel if they have to stop breastfeeding before they are ready when their baby is younger.” But that recognition is still rarely enough. Milli, who is based in West Sussex, stopped feeding her son when he was 10 weeks old. Those 10 weeks had been difficult, to say the least: she had undergone a grade-one C-section after serious birth complications which imperilled both her and her son’s life. Days later, Milli’s mastitis led to her being hospitalised with sepsis and feeding her son became a subject of medical debate between the teams responsible for her care. She and her son managed to find comfort in feeding by the time he was eight weeks old, but she was struggling to keep up with his demand. “I was very incapacitated in many ways,” she says. “I was so heartbroken when it ended before I wanted it to. I was devastated, but I didn’t want to tell anyone because I think it was hard for them to understand: I was already combi-feeding, and I’d already gone through so much, and I was so lucky that neither of us had died in birth or during sepsis. I remember trying to explain that to [my partner], and he just could not get it. I grieved. It really felt as close to grieving as anything else I’ve experienced.”
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
