Love drugs: How hormones tug at your heartstrings
If you’ve ever worried about your ability to love a new baby, it’s time to redirect your energies. Unbeknownst to you, your body has been making trips to the pharmacy since you hit puberty, and you’ve got a medicine cabinet full of drugs that will be delivered straight to your bloodstream the second they are required.
Are we talking about pitocin? The epidural? No, we’re talking about your body’s natural love drugs: oxytocin, prolactin, endorphins, and dopamine. All play crucial roles in how, when, and why you fall in love with your new baby, and it’s really nice to know your body has the emotional stuff covered when you’re immediately postpartum. Besides, the precision with which they are released upon Baby’s arrival will have you considering pursuing a pharmacology degree.
Oxytocin
Oh, oxytocin. We’re all familiar with you. It’s you that probably led to the conception of the wee one in the first place, and it’s you that gets labor going when D-Day arrives. In fact, it’s you in your synthetic form (pitocin) that is given intravenously to speed up labor in some hospitals. Oxytocin helps gets your milk flowing, it makes the uterus contract during labor, and it aids in conquering exhaustion to give you that amazing euphoric feeling once your baby is born. It is released in its most concentrated forms during skin-to-skin contact, which explains that rush you get when you first touch the slippery, soft skin of your new infant.
Prolactin
Prolactin’s main job is to stimulate your breasts to make milk, and it also plays a role in encouraging relaxation and nurturing feelings. Levels rise during pregnancy while your breasts prepare to nurse, drop right before the birth, and then rise again the second the baby is put to your breast. Levels will remain high as long as you breastfeed, and then they’ll drop gradually until your child is weaned. Prolactin also suppresses testosterone in both men and women, which (somewhat necessarily) decreases libido.
Endorphins
Blessed endorphins reduce the immediately postpartum mother’s perception of pain, and they launch the lifelong rewarding feelings that come from bonding. Endorphins also help to explain why it’s so hard for new mothers to leave their babies for any length of time: the pleasurable feelings they both get from being together result from concentrated levels of endorphins, and it can be physically uncomfortable when these levels drop.
Dopamine
Infamous for its presence in heroin and cocaine, dopamine is naturally present in new mothers. It’s an addictive hormone, one that flows between you and your baby and helps motivate you to want to be a good parent.
Special Circumstances
Adoptive parents can attest, of course, to the strength of their feelings toward a new child even without the accompanying birthing hormones. Oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine flow freely when you first lay eyes on your child, and those powerful resulting feelings are just as intoxicating.
As for fathers? Neither are they immune to the powerful effects of hormones, especially when they see their new babies for the first time. Don’t expect too much of your partner before the birth (he’s not privy to the strong hormones that accompany pregnancy), but be prepared to be overwhelmed by his love for your child when the little one arrives. Testosterone levels may plummet in first-time fathers, and some men begin to produce estrogen, which results in the loving and attentive behaviors that encourage infants to thrive.
If your baby arrives and you don’t feel a rush of all-consuming love, don’t worry. You’re not an awful person, and you’re still going to be a great parent. Delayed feelings of love and bonding can result from any number of things (unexpected interventions, medicated labours, and overwhelming pain or exhaustion, to name a few), but these are normal, and you’re not the first person to wonder why you’re not in love with your new baby. If negative feelings persist, talk with someone you trust, and know that things will get better. Your hormones wouldn’t have it any other way.
From the February 2010 issue of The Source
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