After Alia Macrina Heise gave birth to her third child in 2007, she began experiencing what she described at the time as “postpartum depression that comes and goes.”
As a lactation consultant and mother of three, she knew that’s not how postpartum depression works, but she didn’t have any other language then for what she was feeling.
“It was such a sudden drop in mood. And then everything was fine again,” Heise told HuffPost. For her, the drop in mood typically lasted for about two minutes.
While doing some internet research, she stumbled upon a post in the postpartum depression section of a parenting forum. Titled “Only When Nursing,” it described what she had been dealing with to a T. For the first time, Heise made the connection between the emotions she was feeling and the act of breastfeeding. Because she experienced a lot of spontaneous letdowns — when milk is released from the breast when not nursing or pumping — she hadn’t tied the two things together before.
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