Is it really possible my milk supply has stopped due to stress? Can I restart it?

[aaaaaAAARGHandbreathe]

On maternity leave - v stressful situation at work with line manager (incidentally female).

Quick sumary:

• demanding I come in for a meeting for end of year performance review 12 days before I was due even though I was already on ML
• emailing again to demand meeting 8 days after given birth
• asking to meet at my house if more convenient - no it's fricking not! My baby is 6 weeks old ffs I don't want to bf in front of you - also because she stays at hotel when in London near my house I felt housebound to avoid running into her)
• I send email politely asking for some time out - e.g. don't call me I'll call you
• emails with new date for meeting a few weeks on etc.
• I ask union to contact her to explain to leave me alone for time being

All goes quiet for about 3 months, one innocuous email containing department news which is fine. Then on July 30th sends email requesting monthly calls with me. Despite baby now sleeping through on a regular basis (yay!) so very few night feeds. I spend several nights awake with stress worrying about how I'm going to work with her on my return

August 11th I realise my boobs are not filling up AT ALL. Start taking fenugreek. Too late. 7 month old is starving - have to introduce formula which of course screws up any chance of continuing bfing.

Is there anything I can do? Can stress really do this? Aside from the mental effects I am feeling I know I am stressed because my psoriasis goes crazy (v itchy head and ears!) Has anyone suffered stress to the degree your milk supply stops? Or is it something else?

Any advice offered is very much appreciated. Thanks!

Horrible situation :(

Acute shock/grief can interfere with let down temporarily (car accident; death of someone close to you; great fear....that sort of thing). This usually resolves itself within a few hours.

I'd be looking for other reasons for an apparent drop in supply with well-established breastfeeding - including misinterpretation of breasts not filling up which is normal and does not mean there is no milk.

After 7 mths, it will take a long time to 'kill' your supply - easiest thing would be to start breastfeedin again, maybe more freq than you were doing, and all should return to normal.

Your baby's behaviour may not have been indicating he was 'starving' but he might well have been reacting to your own stress - far, far more likely than a sudden disappearence of milk. What do you think?

Hope you get the work situation sorted.

Thanks TikTok - i know you have a wealth of experience in this are so thanks for replying.

He is eating lots and is teething so has not been that interested in milk until morning/bedtime and then i feel like he's struggling to get any out.

Purely on an evolutionary basis I would have thought bfing would resist this level of stress (I am v stressed but cannot be compared to losing someone/being in an accident etc) so will try and get him to feed more frequently during the day if he continues sleeping through the night (am not complaining but also felt that sudden stopping of night feeds - baby's choice) might have impacted.

Will just persevere and hope supply adjusts.

plus i think i will post in Legal to see if anyone has any good advice on what level of contact is reasonable during ML! Thank god for MN.

Tik Tok is obviously an expert in breastfeeding and I am not, so just a personal observation on that side: my breasts stopped feeling full around that time. It happened fairly suddenly too - all of sudden I could sleep on my front all night long without pain. Breastfed both mine for well over a year and towards the end (when I was feeding morning and night) they only ever felt 'full' if I had gone more than 24 hours (which I did occassionally - away for wedding anniversary, etc).

On the contact, that is more my area. Your work have no right to contact you during maternity leave at all really. They are allowed to keep you up to date: newsletters and the like. They are allowed to suggest Keeping in Touch days. KIT days let you (if BOTH parties agree) come into work to keep in touch. People generally use them for training or important corporate entertaining they don't want to miss. You could use them for an appraisal if you wanted. You can do a maximum of 10. As your return gets nearer, they are allowed to contact you to discuss that (e.g. whether you want to put in a flexible working request).

They are NOT allowed to harass you. If you do not want monthly calls, email and say actually you do not want to have monthly calls and would rather she didn't contact you whilst you are off, except for X, Y , Z (department newsletter, etc). If you have a union are you somewhere reasonably big? Could you speak to your HR dept, they would probably have a fit at what she's doing.