What happens to your hormones when you stop breastfeeding, and what helps when the floor drops out

By Anna Cave-Bigley

I thought I would feel free. After months of feeding Alfie, I expected the end of it to feel like getting my body back, my evenings back, a little of myself back. What I did not expect was the crash. The first thing I did, the honest first thing, was pour a good glass of wine, for my nerves and for my sins. The next morning I started on my body properly, because nobody had warned me that stopping could feel like this, and once I understood what was happening it was a great deal easier to carry.

So here is the thing nobody pencils into the calendar. If you are weaning, or circling the idea of it, this is what is coming, and what helps.

What is happening

While you are feeding, your body runs on a particular setting. Prolactin stays high to keep the milk coming, and it carries a background hum of calm with it. Oxytocin, the let-down hormone, arrives in a warm rush every time the baby latches. Between them they have been running a mood-regulation system you probably never noticed, because you never had to.

When you wean, both fall away. The daily doses of calm and warmth stop, and for some women the mood drops hard with them: weepy, anxious, flat, a low that research links to the sudden fall in prolactin and oxytocin and that can mimic the early postpartum weeks. Oxytocin in particular is tied closely to mood, with low levels linked to depressive symptoms in new mothers, so losing those repeated daily surges is not nothing.

At the same time, your reproductive system wakes up from its long pause. The high prolactin of breastfeeding had been holding ovulation off, the reason so many of us go months without a period while feeding. As the feeds drop, prolactin falls and the ovaries start up again, with oestrogen and progesterone returning to their monthly rise and fall. Full, regular cycles often do not settle until weaning is complete. So you can get hit from two directions at once: the steadying hormones leaving, and the up-and-down cycle hormones coming back.

It is under-researched, which is part of why no one tells you. But it is real, and it has a name, the post-weaning low. Naming it matters, because most women going through it assume they are imagining it, or failing at the one part that was meant to feel like relief.

Wean gently, not cold turkey

The single most useful thing I can tell you is to take it slowly. A gradual taper gives your hormones time to re-regulate instead of dropping off a cliff, and it lowers the risk of engorgement, clogged ducts and mastitis. Drop one feed, hold there for a few days, let your body catch up, then drop the next. This is a transition, not a switch you flip.

A lactation specialist who knows your supply well is worth finding for this part. They will pace it with you and spot trouble early.

For the physical side, a few practical things, none of them ours and none of them a fix to reach for alone. Sage and peppermint have a long traditional use in easing milk supply down. Many lactation consultants suggest sunflower lecithin to keep milk flowing and lower the chance of a clog as production winds back. Cool compresses help with fullness, and gentle stroking towards the armpit does more than firm massage, which tends to inflame things further. Run any of it past your specialist or GP first, especially if you are prone to mastitis.

Support for the after

Evenings tend to be the hardest stretch, the old witching hour without the feed that used to settle everyone, including you. A wind-down cue helps fill that gap. A cup of The Calm, the phone down, a proper hard stop to the day.

And when your cycle does return, it can come back louder than you remember it, heavier, crampier, less predictable, while your body relearns its rhythm. That is the season we made Gentle Period for, the blend for after feeding rather than during. It is built around raspberry leaf and lady's mantle, two of the most enduring herbs in women's wellness traditions, and a blend traditionally used to ease period discomfort.

One ingredient is worth explaining, because it is the reason this blend is kept for after. Gentle Period contains red clover, which is a phytoestrogen, a plant compound structurally similar to oestrogen. That is precisely why we leave it out of our pregnancy and feeding blends and keep it only in this one. It is not a hormone treatment and it does not do anything clever to your levels. It is a botanical with a long traditional use in women's herbalism, named plainly so you know what is in your cup.

The mental-health line, said properly

A weaning dip that lifts over a few weeks as your hormones resettle is one kind of thing. A low that sits, deepens, frightens you, or slowly takes away the things you used to enjoy is another, and it deserves more than a herbal tea and a brave face. Take it to your GP or a perinatal mental health professional. This is not medical advice, and it is not a thing to white-knuckle alone.

If the worst has not lifted within a couple of months, that is the signal to get help, not the signal to wait longer.

I weaned Alfie thinking I would feel free, and in time I did. But the in-between was real, and nobody had named it for me. So I am naming it for you. The crash is not a sign you did it wrong. It is a body letting go of one job and remembering an old one, and it passes.

Anna x

The science, sourced

• Weaning, mood and the prolactin and oxytocin drop: Investigation of the Relationship Between Weaning Readiness and Maternal Depression

• Oxytocin and maternal mood: Trajectories of oxytocin and vasopressin around mother-infant interaction in postpartum depression

• The cycle returning after weaning: Lactational Amenorrhea: Neuroendocrine Pathways Controlling Fertility and Howie et al., Fertility after childbirth: post-partum ovulation and menstruation in bottle and breast feeding mothers

• Red clover as a phytoestrogen: Phytochemical Composition of Different Red Clover Genotypes

DISCLAIMER

The SABI blog and articles are not meant to instruct or advise on medical or health conditions, but to inform. The information and opinions presented here do not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals for your unique situation.

ABOUT ANNA

Anna is a Co-founder and CEO of The SABI and has spent the past 13 years working in or for governments, senior businessmen and politicians around the world. Living in Bogota, Colombia, she recently renovated one of Colombia's oldest and most iconic coffee estates, developing a unique taste and travel experience. She lives with her husband and three boys Lorenzo, Alfie and Salvador who are responsible for the beautiful journey that inspired her to pursue The Sabi.

HORMONAL & PROUD

The SABI was created to help women through the hardest moments of pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and every stage that follows. We want to change the story around our hormones, from one of taboo, embarrassment and loneliness to one of awareness, and even pride.

More than a wellness brand, The SABI is a line of rituals, supportive tools and functional herbal remedies, tested by hundreds of years of traditional medicine and now backed by modern science. It was conceived by women who have lived the joys and the deeper costs of bringing a child into the world, of a heavy or difficult period, of miscarriage and trouble conceiving.

Consider this an invitation to know your body and its cycles, to learn to work with them at any stage of life, and to know that support exists. Look for the right sources, know there is help, and know that you are not on your own.