Anyone else admit to being as high as a kite on prolactin

[Reallytired]

My daughter is six months old and we are doing baby led weaning. It means at the moment she is eating next to nothing. Ie. yesterday she ate a rice cake, sucked a piece of steak and bit a piece of carrot. She refuses to be spoon fed or drink milk from a bottle or beaker.

At the moment I feel resigned to the fact that my dd has no intention of being weaned. Although I feel tired, I also feel great. At the moment I have no plans to force her to wean. I am enjoying the prolactin high.

Seven years ago, my son was exactly the same and I restricted milk feeds on the advice of the health visitor. My mood dropped attriocously. I am sure that this drop in mood was due to a drop in prolactin levels.

Hmmm....there's not a lot of research on this, reallytired. Depression and mood in mothers varies massively, and the evidence is that to limit explanation to hormones only is misleading.

In any case, prolactin is not a major player at all in established breastfeeding - by 6 mths postnatal circulating prolactin is virtually down to normal levels. By 6 mths, breastfeeding is not really hormonally driven. That's more the case in the early weeks.

Do you not think your mood and your feelings are less due to biochemistry than the fact that this time round you are confident and you know what you are doing...whereas last time, you were far more easily influenced by an HV who (it turned out) knew rather less about feeding than she should do? Your disappointment in this 'fix' suggested by her not working would be enough to make your mood drop, on top of your worries about your son's eating?

What do you think?