Help me understand postpartum hormones
November 16, 2014 8:23 PM   Subscribe

I understand that women's hormones get wonky after giving birth - some go up, some go down - and the effects are everything from gonzo baby love to night sweats to psychosis. But is there any information on how the hormones specifically change over time, over the day or even how they might vary between women?

I've been trying to learn more about postpartum hormones, but I'm having a total Google fail. I either get information about postpartum depression or generic information i.e. "hormones fluctuate a lot" or mommy blogs/online groups in which women discuss/rant about the symptoms. Is there any information out there about the specifics (with a fun graph!!) of which hormones increase, which go down, why they do it, by how much (in units, not just "a lot"), what the effects are, how long they go down/up for and how this varies between women? Any papers with this info would be welcome too.
posted by Toddles to Health & Fitness (4 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
This article from Kellymom discusses postpartum hormones and how they affect lactation. It might be a good starting point.
posted by chiababe at 9:34 PM on November 16, 2014


I just skimmed through these to see if they would fit your criteria; I think they will touch of some of your criteria (ie, graphs, with units, some of them show all the subjects so you can see the variability).

This one Maternity blues and major endocrine changes: Cardiff puerperal
mood and hormone study II
(PDF) did focus on healthy women if you look at the enrollment criteria. It does evaluate and also includes graphs/tables hormone levels from 35- 90 subjects at a time, and you can see their values on the graphs- of progesterone and cortisol pre- and post-birth.

I think that this one is interesting -Oxytocin and the Development of Parenting in Humans (link to article)- it also has graphs/tables of oxytocin in both the mother and the father. This is kind an old story/data, but if you haven't looked at research before about the role of hormones and behavior, its interesting.

This is just the tip of the ice berg, and the research can go on in any direction. I did not pull additional ones up because it might get overwhelming if you are not interested in these tangents, so I will just mention them here. So another term/topic you might find interesting is the difference between various hormone levels in women who give birth via vaginal vs. cesarean routes (list here). There are also many more hormones that change during this time, things like thyroid hormones, ghrelin, etc.

IF you happen to poke around google scholar or pubmed and find papers that you can't access(or find papers listed in the papers above that you can't get access to), feel free to memail the titles -I can grab them if there are only a few.

Good luck.
posted by Wolfster at 11:19 PM on November 16, 2014


According to Edward. L. Klaiber's book Hormones and the Mind, within days of birth women's estrogen levels plummet to levels 100X less than they were during the third trimester. According to Deborah Sichel's book Women's Moods, estrogen levels reach normal prepregnant levels 24 hours after birth.

"After the initial drop, estrogen levels remain somewhat low until the pituitary gland and ovaries resume the menstrual cycle. How long these organs are quiet can vary. If you are not breast-feeding, some activity can begin within two to four weeks of the birth of yoru baby. If you are breast-feeding, the hormones of lactation often suppress pituitary functioning; it may take months for your menstrual cycle to reestablish itself. ... Prolactin, the hormone that enables milk production, increases rapidly as estrogen levels drop, and this may also contribute to irritability and sensitivity early in the postpartum. Milk production depends on a hormonal environment of low estrogen and progesterone and high prolactin. ... Progesterone takes a few days to 'normalize' after deliver. Its rapid unbinding from the GABA receptors in the brain may add to anxiety ... The shifts that occur in thyroid-hormone activity after childbirth may also be part of a postpartum depressive illness. From 5 to 9 percent of women have abnormal thuroid levels postpartum, and some of them are depressed as well. Usually thyroid medication rectifies the problem, but the depression must be treated in addition to the thyroid. Measurement of thyroid levels is an imperative part of treatment for postpartum depression..."

One thing about both PMS and post-partum mood issues is that it's not exactly that the low levels of estrogen (or whatever) that's making women feel so bad, it's the sudden drop -- the estrogen withdrawal, which also affects serotonin.

So, to recap: estrogen falls precipitously, progesterone falls, for some women thyroid falls, and in breastfeeding women prolactin increases (and oxytocin too, at least during the act of breastfeeding). Many/most women experience what's called "baby blues" about 36 hours after birth, as they go through the estrogen drop, and about 10% of women will have symptoms of PPD later (though exactly how postpartum depression and hormones are connected is not totally understood). Hope this helps.
posted by feets at 3:24 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


This graph might be the sort of thing you're looking for?

I google image searched "sex hormone fluctuation prepartum and postpartum" and found it that way.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 7:02 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


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