A soft, sad feeling wells up from the pit of my stomach when I start nursing. It’s like when you’re little and staying at a friend’s house where everything feels slightly wrong because it’s different from home. Or when you’re out with people who aren’t close friends and you’re kind of fucked up and it seems like nobody in the world really knows you. It’s like a yearning for somewhere or someone more deeply familiar to me than anything I can think of. There’s a kind of hopelessness to it because whatever I’m missing is too abstract to be attainable.
At some point I googled, “breastfeeding sad” and was surprised to learn that this highly specific feeling is a named (though not well-studied) condition called D-MER, or Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. It seems to be related to the drop in dopamine that accompanies the rise in oxytocin when milk is released. The dopamine deficit is brief but apparently strong enough in some people to plunge them into a well of negative emotions at the start of a breastfeeding session. I’ve found that being warm and well-hydrated helps, but nothing really stops it from coming on. It’s better now that I know to expect it. I focus on Miro’s screwed up little face of concentration, I trace the shape of an ear with my finger, and I remind myself that everything is okay.
I’ve heard so many things about the first few weeks of motherhood and nothing exactly matches up to the experience. It’s not some constant state of bliss. There was the pain and limiting effects of surgery that left me unable to do anything for myself. Sharp stabs when I tried to twist to get myself water or my phone. Anthony would have to get up and come around to my side of the bed just so that I could reach something a foot away from me. Shuffling walks up and down the hospital hallway, where I would look out the windows and be shocked to see people moving easily in the sunlight as if they were living their normal lives. The very average midtown Manhattan view seemed very beautiful to me.
At home, now, the baby is like a pomodoro clock, breaking my time into two hour chunks. He nurses for 15 minutes and then we sit or nap for a little while and then an hour and a half later it’s time to do it again. Not very much happens during those times in between; maybe we go for a walk or I make some oatmeal, we eat and clean up…and that’s pretty much it. Long hours stretch out that blur the line between boredom and contentment. Stiff limbs from keeping them fixed in one place, aching arms from holding up a head at just the right angle to nipple, the pillows never in a perfect spot. I’m restless but not healed enough to move the way I’d like to. I want to fix my mind on something like a book or movie but it’s too tired and slippery, it’s hard to make it focus anywhere.
Then there was the other day, after a night in which I’d convinced myself that Miro’s breathing was too heavy and fast. We took a temperature reading from his forehead and it blinked orange, Too high, and my mind spun out of control. Even though a rectal temperature read turned out fine, and even after I’d counted his breaths and determined they were within a normal range, my body couldn’t seem to calm down and I had to sit for a long while counting my own breaths until I could be a functional person again.
Sometimes I’ll put on just the right album as we settle in for nursing, something tender and warm (Julie Byrne, serpentwithfeet). I still feel the sort-of sad feeling but I can be peaceful in it as well. Maybe in anything overwhelming is a kind of peace. I sit and feel and it doesn’t matter if the feeling is good or bad, I am alive and pulsing with it.
Bliss is a word we only use to describe an experience from the outside, because when you’re inside of it, the texture is too varied and vivid to encapsulate with a static descriptor. Panic and peacefulness and boredom and joy and yearning and sadness flicker from one moment to the next, and the bliss of it all is just being open for the ride.
What I’m Cooking
Powerful oatmeal
This is just oatmeal, but it’s also really good oatmeal, quite nutritious and satisfying and almost more savory than sweet.
Your sort-of sad nursing description is just right. For me (at both births) I found it was strongest in the days after birth (very strong, stomach falling and a dull pain in my uterus at the latch) and then trailed away in the months to follow.
The oatmeal recipe has been added to my list!