Caitlin Moran - a bit more interesting than usual today

Contessa yes, me too (although it did finally work out for me). I really struggled both times, found it really painful and had all sorts of problems. It took a while to even put my finger on it - think once it stopped being painful I was still 'bracing' myself for something else when I began?

Another thing no-one told me about - nipple shields! Turned everything around with dc2, made life so much easier.

God, I've just realised I might have had D-MER I had never heard of it until now. I thought I felt like that because of guilt, because I was so shit at breastfeeding and never managed to do much of it.

Sorry - all kinds of typos. I should stop using my swiftkey and type words out properly.

This is all so fascinating. Its important we to understand how we can all be so different due to hormones. I wouldn't know of people didn't share in forums like this. Either you think something is wrong with you if you think you're different from everyone else, or else think that everyone has the same things happen to them.

I've read about PND being the 'wrong' extreme hormones being switched on. I had a health visitor tell me that giving birth (or having a miscarriages) was like all our hormones being thrown up in the air and not knowing quite what cars you were going to be dealt. I was a very different - better? - version of myself when pregnant and breastfeeding. I'd have taken in orphan babies and nurtured them 24/7, when in reality, once I was past the infant years, I went back to being someone who doesn't really like being around other people's small children. I think CM is very wrong to write about the perimenopause as though it's a one size fits all, and also to insinuate female hormones make all women kind. Vit feels like it gives men a freecpass to be angry and unkind. In reality, many women haven't spent their ferrule years bathed in the placid hormones - in yet have still managed not to go around being violent.

My criticism of CM, was to assume she were saying women's hormones stop them being

Not me bish but OMG the rollercoaster when I didn't feed my then 3 year old for 4 days when he went on hol and I had to work (badly timed bookings!)

In my lll group that's been mentioned a lot.

I've recently been through a hypothyroid blip and I did begin to get terrible physical pms. Strangely I get quite low just after my period at the mo.

I have some friends who's pms is so bad they take Prozac just for the 2 weeks before.

I've personally found magnesium to be amazing.

I definitely used to have the post coital thing.

she said she'd never heard of anyone being sad when feeding babies.

GOD this sentence just made me sooo angry

(not at you!)

I definitely noticed it as something separate from 'baby blues' with my first baby, but didn't realise it was an actual thing until my second.

That link says it’s caused by dopamine dropping too much, described as ‘inappropriately’ to allow the letdown reflex. Why it can happen inappropriately isn’t clear

@bishopgiggles yes! I had this with all of mine for the first few weeks. It was a black wave of despair that would wash over me when babies first latched on. I even asked my midwife about it once as it was so hard and she said she'd never heard of anyone being sad when feeding babies.

I got all my D-MER info from here

d-mer.org/

Yeah I don't understand why we get yet another shitty thing on top of childbirth and everything that goes with it!

Omg I just googled it and came up with 'post coital dysphoria'.

@bishopgiggles yes, I had that a few times, when breastfeeding but also occasionally after sex. I have never understood it or been able to put it into words.

Yes, I’ve seen that breastfeeding phenomenon described as feeling like you’re ‘staring into the abyss’. No idea why nature in her wisdom would create that?? For me I only felt it once or twice, and it was a sudden feeling of wanting to cry.

This’ll make me sound such a weirdo but if I concentrate hard I notice a tiny hint of the same feeling immediately before I wee

ahh, no I can see it doesn't. I have a subscription but no idea how to do a share token. Maybe someone could pm me?

does this work?
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caitlin-moran-me-drugs-and-the-perimenopause-mpzn2cdh2

Yes! I’ve always thought it was to do with the traumatic birth experience and post natal ‘care’ I had, particularly trying desperately hard to breastfeed the ‘right’ way in hospital as I felt my body had done everything else ‘wrong’. It never lasted beyond the start of the feed and I ignored it.
Interesting, thank you.

This is a slight tangent, and I might start a thread on it someday, but did anyone experience D-MER? A pronounced feeling of desperation/sadness specifically when breastfeeding.

It's fascinating, fairly common, and I wasn't told about it by any of the many breastfeeding people I saw (midwives, NCT, BF mentors), but that's the only time when I've actually felt my feelings go on-and-offable, if that makes any sense. Like flicking a switch on and off when I fed. It's when I realised how much mood really is linked to something tangible like hormones, brain chemistry, (and I wondered if everyone using the word 'dysphoria' experienced something like this very specific feeling).

I've been on and off hormonal bc and other treatments without noticing too much change to my mood other than general PMT, but I'm really interested in how much hormones are responsible for, even within just my own body/mind let alone the rest of society.

I really enjoyed this article, and think she was nailing her colours to the mast, by using the word sex where another author may have used gender.
I am perimenopausal and related to almost every word.
I wondered as I read it whether it might make it onto a discussion here.

I think we have to accept that hormones affect women differently. I never suffered from PMS, and I used to think that women who did were probably exaggerating or imagining it. I didn't suffer from "preg head" or "baby brain". Similarly, since menopause I haven't become more angry - I always was pretty angry one way or another. (The trans stuff now makes me very angry but that's very specific and nothing to do with being post-menopausal.)

I've come to accept that some women are affected by their hormonal cycle. It's just that I'm not.

Please can someone recirculate the article with a share token?

It's not menopause that makes us stop being 'nice' (I'm nowhere near it myself) it's realising we don't give a fuck any more. I have never been more angry than when I was breastfeeding and on maternity leave. The unutterable shitness of being a woman was inescapable.

Missed this, yes that did it for me. I enjoyed my babies and breastfeeding (when it was easier) but I was angry at the same time.

And I've been experienced a similar thing during lockdown as the children haven't been at nursery and school and I've been working from home. However Dh hasn't as much at all and when he has he's not used to it useless So it's been me trying to juggle everything and feeling completely royally fed up at times.,

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she gets irritated by the writers she used to like banging on about the menopause like they’ve just discovered it
Jenny Eclair discovered HRT and Jamie Oliver recipes ffs. And knitting.

I’ve always loved her.

Theory: could it be that the mood change we experience during perimenopause is a stronger version of our pmt? I’ve never got particularly angry with pmt but very sad and helpless feeling, and that’s what got massively worse in the perimenopause.

Am on the pill for it (not for contraception), and it’s working really well. Qlaira it’s called. Also boobs regrew (was experiencing breast atrophy, they were very small to begin with)

It's not menopause that makes us stop being 'nice' (I'm nowhere near it myself) it's realising we don't give a fuck any more. I have never been more angry than when I was breastfeeding and on maternity leave. The unutterable shitness of being a woman was inescapable.

@valencyredfern exactly!

I find CM completely insufferable. She finds herself totally fascinating and I'd be very surprised if she backtracks on previous spoutings supporting the TRA agenda. Must find some links.

Having a child was a pivotal moment.

Yet more judgement handed out left right and centre.