I wonder if, based on today's post and the resulting comments, there is a difference between women with postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety when it comes to breastfeeding …
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Well, personally, my anxiety centers largely on breastfeeding. In particular, the ability to pump enough for my son while I'm at work.
I freaked out about it for the entire three months of my maternity leave… and – now that I'm back at work – I continue to freak out about it every time I happen to open the freezer. Opening the freezer means I have to count the bags of milk and number of ounces… it probably borders on OCD.
However, having my baby boy at my breast is pretty much the only thing that can calm the constantly whirling thoughts that consume my brain (and prevent me from sleeping – ugh) every other moment of the day.
I think, for me, my anxiety always leads to depression. So when I become incredibly anxious, say believing that I am not doing right by my baby in my failures to breastfeed because MY LORD HOW WILL I ACCOUNT FOR EVERY DROP OF MILK IF I CAN'T SEE IT (ZOMG!!11!!), I then become depressed as a result of the overwhelming, exhaustive anxiety. I am always an anxious person. The depression seems to come and go.
With some women, there may be. In my practice I see women who are suffering from both depression and anxiety and often, as many folks have commented, the breast feeding piece is one that adds to a mom's anxiety- whether that be from breast feeding challenges, anxiety about a baby's weight gain, anxiety around being so depended on, or a host of other sources. I see many of these moms find great relief when they give themselves permission to make the decision to stop nursing and while their anxiety might not go away completely, one element of it is softened. For some moms who are depressed, the release of oxytocin during nursing and the close proximity to their baby is often reassuring for them and may decrease their feelings of sadness. Of course, as we know, many moms suffer a combination of depression and anxiety (sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the two). While breast feeding may increase feelings of overwhelm for one mom, it may increase feelings of confidence and closeness for another.
It would be nice if there were a standardized "rule" around this, but alas, PPMDs are just more complicated than many of us wish they were…
I've been dealing with both postpartum depression and anxiety. I feel lucky that we didn't have breast feeding problems, and when the anxiety and depression was at it's worst, I credited breast feeding for maintaining what little sanity I had left. Of course, looking back on it now, we were so "good" at nursing that my baby refused a bottle (only took it a few times) so we had to get used to reverse cycling (baby would wait on me all.day.long. while I was at work and then eat all.night.long) while I worked and THAT did cause me a great deal of anxiety, not to mention sleep deprivation. I agree with the last comment…it's all so complicated, and infant feeding — any way you do it — can be disconcerting for new moms (is the baby getting enough? the right stuff? at the right time? the right way?…). My baby is now 17 months and we're still nursing and still it brings me both great peace and sometimes frustration (cause sometimes I just wanna break!). Like everything else in life, it's just not black and white.