Did I say you are not a parent? ( I’m trying to explain what I mean by higher highs, lower lows–outside of the brain chemistry aspect.)
That oxytocin “high” can be experienced through some other bodily processes other than breastfeeding. And by both genders. 
And for me there was no “high” associated with childbirth. It was 22 hours of arduous pain. It’s an excellent story to trot out when the kids are giving me crap, but yeah, no “high” there. (snorts to herself).
Parenting is as rich or as meaningless an experience as the parent chooses to make it. It’s not like boom you popped out a kid with a tag attached that say “Meaningful!” Sheesh.
There’s a high associated with childbirth? Not in my experience.
I had one delivery so painful that whenever the nurses saw me afterward, they would snicker to each other about how I had been the “screamer,” and one delivery that was less painful than your average dental appointment. In neither case was there anything even resembling a high.
We’re all so different. I think one of my loved ones had postpartum depression after each of her kids. She kept saying I was high I would crash down after each of my kids, but I never did. I loved and still love being a mom and childbirth was a fascinating miracle. I had an out of body experience when each kid was born and was watching everything without much pain or discomfort. It was fascinating and kept me from needing pain meds. I’m glad I was able to have the two wonderful kids we have and go through all the ups and downs with them. It’s been an exciting journey and it continues.
I worked for a while with post-partum women both in and out of a hospital setting. A few did have the high described, but the vast majority did not.
The high was really nice and helped take the edge off of the exhaustion of waking so often to nurse infants. I was grateful to have that instead of the postpartum depression.
So, the takeaway from this thread:
→One cannot reliably generalize from one’s own experiences or attitudes to anyone else’s.
Atomom, I love your post. 
Several years ago I had the worst Friday afternoon in my career. I had to be present when my boss has to tell one of my coworkers that her daughter had been killed in a car crash earlier that day. Her daughter was actually on her way to the airport to come visit her mother at the end of finals week. I will never forget this woman’s hands on the table top grabbing at the air opening an closing as she tried to grasp what was being told to her. Yet, despite this unimaginable loss, and knowing this mother to this day, I don’t think she would still have given up the chance to raise this beautiful young woman for the 19 years that she had her despite how painfully it ended. It was an amazing example of “until death do us part” being the best case scenario for any relationship.
can’t even imagine
I was watching the news about the Zika virus that is rapidly spreading from mosquitoes, and how the " health officials in several of those countries are telling female citizens to avoid becoming pregnant, in some cases for up to two years" due to the neurological birth disorders that can result. What a thing to be faced with.
The Zika virus is something I’ve been keeping my eye on for a little over a year. (It’s hard not to when you’re on a bunch of global repro health listservs.) It’s a truly horrific virus and there is just about zero that can be done for it.
I have a few friends who graduated in my MPH cohort last year who were planning on trying to have kids soon. Now with this virus (and the fact that most of them work in global settings where they travel), they’re all seriously considering putting off pregnancy.
movemetoo–I looked up the Zika virus but while I saw that the warning was for pregnant I didn’t see anything about two years before becoming pregnant.
@gouf78 I read it hear on the CNN website: http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/26/health/zika-what-you-need-to-know/
It wasn’t clear if the two years wait is for the outbreak to run its course, or perhaps it is an amount of time for the virus to be out of ones system once exposed.
This literally just popped up in my email if anyone is interested: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/zika/en/
I believe the two years is for the virus to get cleared out of the area so they’ll adjust that number if the epidemic grows or wanes. I’d assume they’re basing it on the virus’ pattern in the few other countries where they have been outbreaks. (Disclaimer: I haven’t looked into it.)
Zika sounds like it MAY have profound effects on fetuses and the microcephaly may only be “the tip of the iceberg” from the npr story I was listening to today–truly a scary virus and only 1/5 or so of the moms had symptoms that they ever had Zika! They are studying some of the babies and moms in South America.
I sounds scary. And you wonder how long they follow people who have had it. For example, people who have had Lyme disease have symptoms far after their initial illness, and ebola they are finding lingers for a really long time. Think of how chicken pox and even cold sore viruses linger forever. They need to get more info fast so people can make informed decisions.
@atomom
“Parents have a special relationship with their children (and it’s not the same relationship that children have with their parents). It is an urge to protect and nurture, a responsibility/duty, and a particular emotional bond”
It seems like a natural human instinct but there are some parents out there that don’t have that feeling. They don’t feel the sense of responsibility, bond, or urge to protect Why do you think this is? Why don’t they feel this connection? Isn’t this one relationship of unconditional love? It is something I am not able to understand.
On one hand you have people who can’t have children and are desperate to adopt and then there are those cases where they have a child but have no attachment to them.
Extreme stress at around the time when the child is born? We’re animals, after all, and some animals will abandon a litter that they’ve given birth to under stressful conditions. Their instincts are telling them that this particular litter, at this particular time, is not worth investing resources in because it’s unlikely that the young can be raised successfully under the stressful conditions. Might something similar be happening with people?
I found this: