In this blog post at Babble, Katie Allison Granju tells about a tentatively-identified disorder called "Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex:"
One of the things I mentioned…was how bizarrely agitated and unhappy I felt every time I used a breastpump. I described the feeling as being close to a low grade panic attack.
One of the commenters on that post left a link to a website about something called “Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex” or “D-MER.” I’d never heard of this, so I went and checked the site out, and what I found is truly fascinating, and has the potential to help a whole lot of women.
The site was started by a mother who found herself experiencing sudden and painful feelings of sadness and disappointment every time she started to nurse her baby. She made the connection between her milk letdown (ejection reflex) and the onset of these feelings, and started trying to track down information and resources about this condition, which obviously has the potential to make it very hard for a woman to breastfeed her baby, and could also lead to more serious problems, like depression.
… I have personally known several mothers over the years who have described what I now believe to have been D-MER to me with regard to their personal breastfeeding experiences. These women recounted that they began to feel inexplicably empty and hopeless whenever they breastfed their babies; one friend told me that she had a sudden and powerful pang of what felt like homesickness when the baby would begin to nurse. Another explained that nursing her baby made her feel very anxious and agitated, like she was going to jump out of her own skin.
Check it out, and especially read some of the comments. I didn't think I've ever experienced it, but some of the comments remind me eerily of the horrible feelings I got every time I tried to nurse the baby and the toddler at the same time (like, literally simultaneously, one on each breast). I think I only ever attempted that about three times before I swore I would never, ever, ever do that again.
There's some more detail in Katie's post about the specific hormonal mechanisms that are implicated, and of course you can follow the link in the quote to the DMER website.
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