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POLL: Do You Feel: depressive feelings/hollow feeling in stomach when breastfeeding? - Page 5

Poll Results: Do you experience depressive Feelings or a hollow feeling in your stomach when breastfeeding?

 
  • 25% (69)
    Yes
  • 74% (206)
    No
275 Total Votes  
post #81 of 102
5/26/08 at 5:44pm
Thread Starter 
Here is a D-MER awarness peice on YouTube if anyone is intresting in viewing it!
Sponsored Links
post #82 of 102
5/26/08 at 5:47pm
Huh. And I thought it was only me...
post #83 of 102
5/26/08 at 5:48pm
Thread Starter 
There was a mama somewhere that post about D-MER prehaps being thier own bodies version of "normal." I found someone else who feels this way and I was working that angle for a FAQ section of the new webstie...but now I can't find the quote from the mama? Are you out there....? Where did I read that?
post #84 of 102
5/26/08 at 5:49pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mommy2abigail View Post
Huh. And I thought it was only me...
I love it when I find a new mama who thought they were alone! Hugs! You're not! I'd love to hear about your experience with it...
post #85 of 102
6/13/08 at 3:14pm
Thread Starter 
Bumping fore new mamas!
post #86 of 102
6/20/08 at 4:18pm
Oh my goodness! I am practically crying. I never liked breastfeeding, and never really considered why. I don't feel depressed, but more like "ugh". My son is now 11 months & he hardly nurses anymore. He never seemed to love it either. (I probably didn't make it enjoyable.) I had envisioned myself nursing longer, but I'm trying to be happy that I made it as long as I did. I don't know if having support from like-minded people would have helped me nurse longer, but it would have been nice to know that it can happen. It just seems so silly that breastfeeding is so hard- I mean where is the survival instinct in that?!
post #87 of 102
6/20/08 at 4:28pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rugbymom View Post
Oh my goodness! I am practically crying. I never liked breastfeeding, and never really considered why. I don't feel depressed, but more like "ugh". My son is now 11 months & he hardly nurses anymore. He never seemed to love it either. (I probably didn't make it enjoyable.) I had envisioned myself nursing longer, but I'm trying to be happy that I made it as long as I did. I don't know if having support from like-minded people would have helped me nurse longer, but it would have been nice to know that it can happen. It just seems so silly that breastfeeding is so hard- I mean where is the survival instinct in that?!
I hope you visited the new website!! www.d-mer.org
post #88 of 102
6/28/08 at 12:05pm
Thread Starter 
There is a new facebook group:

500 or more with D-MER

that has JUST been started. The purpose is to show the very high number of women being affected.

Please join!
post #89 of 102
7/7/08 at 10:57am
Wow, I absolutely have this! The hollow, dreadful feelings associated with my nipples started pretty much as soon as I was pregnant, and now that I'm breastfeeding and pumping it's even worse. I wish it lasted a few seconds, though, I feel it all the time I pump for, unless I can get distracted enough. I've been calling it physical nausea + emotional nausea; it feels as if there's this ball of negative feelings that I just can't "throw up".
post #90 of 102
7/7/08 at 1:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Llyra View Post
I've never heard of this before, and it surprises me that some mamas experience this. What I experience with letdown is exactly the opposite-- I get a cozy, drowsy feeling that feels just like how I feel when I crawl into my bed after a long day.

I get very relaxed and feel very loving towards anyone in the vicinity. All feelings of anger or sadness diminish. I guess I assumed everyone felt like this ... scary.
post #91 of 102
7/7/08 at 1:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Llyra View Post
I've never heard of this before, and it surprises me that some mamas experience this. What I experience with letdown is exactly the opposite-- I get a cozy, drowsy feeling that feels just like how I feel when I crawl into my bed after a long day.

Yea that! I had no idea other women felt differently, oppositely of that! Thanks for this thread, it helps to know that others aren't as lucky.
post #92 of 102
7/7/08 at 2:55pm
I get a food aversion and a hollowish feeling in my stomach when DS latches on. I wondered if I was the only one, but it's good to know I'm not!
post #93 of 102
7/8/08 at 11:22pm
Had I just read the poll title, I almost might've voted "yes" because during the entire time I was nursing my DD (who is 13.5 months and weaned now), I was terribly depressed about it, felt like I had no privacy, hated being touched, had really sensitive nipples to the point I would cry sometimes when she wanted to nurse ... but after reading through the threads and the descriptions of D-MER, I am pretty certain what I had was rather a physiological and hormonal issue. Yes, I had feelings of anxiety and depression and hopelessness, but I could not associate them with letdown nor did it cause an emptiness in the pit of my stomach as described by many women in this thread. That emptiness feeling, to me, is like when someone gives you incredibly bad news, bad news of the worst kind like the death of a close family member, etc. But I do not remember experiencing that when nursing. Likewise, I never felt the euphoric feeling others described... Hmm.
post #94 of 102
7/11/08 at 3:28pm
I had this when I was using the breast pump trying to get labor started. (I was being threatened with an induction, and noticed I could get contractions this way.) I thought of it as some kind of a pminitive fear/wanting to escape, feeling just too terrible to describe.

After dd was born, I never had it. (I did have feelings of aggression and wanting to get away later on when she was a toddler with a bad latch, but not this same thing.) The day before I gave birth I still had it, the moment after, no longer.

Oh... and I have connected that home sick thirsty feeling with wanting to be nursed and bury my head in my mother's arm. I think that what I long for is the unique feeling of nourishment and peace I must have felt when I was nursed. The world was ok and nothing else existed in that very moment. (I was only nursed for about a year, so I don't have any real memories of it, though... just would make sense to me.)
post #95 of 102
7/11/08 at 5:06pm
I did maybe for the first 2 weeks. I would feel anxious while feeding her. Like butterflies in my stomach.
post #96 of 102
7/14/08 at 1:49am

genetic link?

I showed my mom the new D-MER website as a way to explain to her why I feel so dreadful when nursing my LO. She says that she felt the same way when she nursed my older sister and that the bad feelings is the reason why she stopped nursing her at 6 weeks. Is a genetic link involved in this problem of negative emotions with breastfeeding?
post #97 of 102
7/14/08 at 11:26am
Thread Starter 
No, that isn't what the evidence is showing us thus far. There are some mother daughter pairs but there are just as many that aren't. ETA: that and the fact that a good amount of mothers do not have D-MER with their first or second babies but will with their third. It *looks* like environmental effect on dopamine or dopamine receptors over time (exposure to too many radio waves or some such thing; that's just a nonsense example to show you what I mean) ....OR individual's life stress experiencing altering brain receptors in the brain....one such study, not ours, done on rats:
"It is concluded that interactions between an individual's experience of stress at adulthood, together with other environmental events in their history can be important determinants of brain DA receptor levels."
Our educated guess right now is that women have NOT been experiencing this from the beginning of time. It's something our life in the western world or the environmental effect has caused. A negative evolution of sorts. That is just a guess though. An educated one. But best not to quote me
post #98 of 102
7/15/08 at 2:13am
This is exactly how my wife described breastfeeding our first daughter. I can't wait to show her this. Thanks.
post #99 of 102
1/6/09 at 6:30pm
I had this bad three years ago when I had to exclusively pump... felt like depression/suicide/yuck... when I was able to start nursing around 5 months pp it got so much better and so did my PPD.

I'm 30 weeks pg now and still breastfeeding a toddler... just in the past couple weeks I am starting to experience this feeling again. I had forgotten about it, it had been so long...
post #100 of 102
1/6/09 at 9:35pm

OMG i THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME

I had this feeling in the first few months of BFing my last 2 I thought it was maybe post partum depression but it ONLY HAPPENED for a short time at the beginning of every nursing session and its AWEFUL its soooooooooo overwhelming I thought this was just me I'm going to have to reaserch this now, thanks for posting
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