As my newborn daughter latched to my breast for the first time, the first wave of the feeling came.
I felt like a thousand bugs were crawling up my legs. I felt shame, I felt sadness, I felt like I wanted to scream for my mum.
My daughter, Melody, fell off and on my breast a few times. Every time she stopped, the feelings stopped, too.
But, I reasoned, I was hormonal, post-major-surgery and reeling from the disappointment of a long weekend trapped in an assessment ward ending in a C-section that, it turned out, I didn’t even need. This, I was sure, explained everything.
Well, it didn’t.
I discovered I was pregnant in late 2021. We had only been trying for a few months and we were absolutely ecstatic to be so blessed without any struggle.
Pregnancy and the thought of giving birth didn’t scare me. If anything, I was looking forward to the experience.
But with a history of poor mental health in the family, plus my own struggles with clinical depression and anxiety through most of my twenties, I was assigned a mental health midwife – something I didn’t previously know existed – and attended regular appointments with her until the month of my expected delivery.
I was fortunate enough to have a textbook pregnancy but it hit a giant pothole at 36 weeks.
My growth scan predicted our baby was already over 7lbs, and when it was repeated a fortnight later, they measured her at well over 9lbs. At this point, a healthy term baby might be expected to only just be at the 5-6lb mark, gaining roughly 1lb per week until birth.
After the first few disastrous attempts at breastfeeding, I kept trying
There went the dreams for a midwife-led water birth in a lavender mist. A consultant decided I couldn’t possibly go a day over my due date and booked me for an induction the day before.
The induction was awful.
A pessary and two doses of gel, all of which are meant to encourage dilation to the point of breaking waters, did nothing at all. I spent hours strapped to a monitor, unable to move.
After a weekend of no staff, no progress and no fewer than eight agonising vaginal examinations, I begged for a C-section to end the nightmare, and got one.
Our – as it turned out, perfectly average-sized – girl came out screaming and starving.
In the recovery room the midwives asked me if I was ready to ‘give feeding a go’ and I was delighted to get straight on with my dream of breastfeeding my child.
Only – this dream didn’t become a reality. Far from it.
After the first few disastrous attempts at breastfeeding, I kept trying. On the postnatal ward I snuggled and fawned over my newborn. She was hungry. I tried to latch her and she’d feed for 30 seconds.
And when she did – bugs. Shame. Misery. Darkness.
By day two, I was still trying to feed her, sobbing uncontrollably, while my husband was rounding up midwives as best as he could to tell them that I had a history of poor mental health and that they had to watch me overnight.
But there were so few of them, and so many of us new mothers.
A healthcare assistant helped me express – even if the sensation made me feel like a cow being milked. The feelings returned and I wanted to claw her off me to make the waves of darkness stop.
When we finally made it home, Melody had had multiple ‘starter’ bottles of formula, but I was determined not to give up. My friend came round, a successful breastfeeder who had experienced a similar rocky start in hospital the year before. She was my last hope.
As soon as the pumps came off, I was back to normal
She hooked me up to a pump and marvelled at the sheer amount of milk we gathered in just over 10 minutes.
‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to have any problems with supply.’
That, I knew. But for 10 minutes I sat there, feeling waves of crushing sadness, wanting to jump out the window of our top floor flat.
As soon as the pumps came off, I was back to normal.
‘Did you ever feel sad?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it… make you want to cry?’ They were the only words I could find, at the time.
‘Oh, constantly!’ she said. ‘I cry over the daftest things since he was born.’
That wasn’t what I meant.
When we saw my midwife on day five, I tried to explain it to her too. I wanted to say that the mere act of nipple stimulation made me want to be dead, but no one understood.
She wrote down, ‘Not breastfeeding. Didn’t like the feeling.’
On day seven, we got a prep machine – a miracle electronic machine that makes a perfect bottle of formula in 90 seconds. Parents joke about items being ‘lifesavers’, and in my case, it was literally that – but, while formula is safe and perfectly healthy, it wasn’t my choice.
It broke my heart.
Eventually my husband found an article online about Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. It’s a rare physiological condition that means the breastfeeder becomes very depressed, anxious and unstable during the milk let-down, and we realised that is what had been happening to me.
What is Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex
Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER) is a rare condition where some women experience a sudden emotional ‘drop’ before releasing milk. While it lasts for minutes, the impact of this condition can be wide-ranging. Some experience wistfulness, whereas people like Emma have experienced depressive feelings during the milk ‘let down’.
As I read the article, I cried even more. I was seen. I wasn’t a dreadful mother. I wasn’t insane.
No one I spoke to had ever heard of it, and as such I was promptly discharged from the mental health team with no treatment, just an advisory to stop breastfeeding.
It was incredibly frustrating to discover there was no information or support, but knowing this was a real condition with a name did bring me enormous comfort.
I was then able to make my peace with formula quickly after that. It meant I had lots of help with feeding, she slept in longer stretches (and so did we, as a result), but I always felt jealous of the effortless way other mums latched their babies without missing a beat in conversation.
I was happy my baby was fed, but I could never understand why this condition happened to me.
Two years later my daughter is healthy, happy and thriving. I am grateful. But I am also on a mission; to raise awareness of this terrifying mystery condition, and to reassure other women who experience the same thing that they are not mad.
And neither was I.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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