Dysphoric milk ejection reflex or ‘D-MER’ may be as common as mastitis. Why don’t more people know about it?

It was 2017. I was 40, and I’d just had my son, my first and only child. It was overwhelming: the extravagant newness of becoming a parent, meeting my kid, the travesty that is American postpartum care.

But there was something else I couldn’t identify. Multiple times a day, I was hit with a sudden and intense wave of sadness. I lost the ability to speak and to think clearly. If I was eating, I lost my appetite; if I wasn’t, I felt nauseous. All I could do was stop, close my eyes and wait for the feeling to pass, which it always did after a minute or two.

Jenny Pritchett, AKA Jenny True, is a copy editor at the Guardian US and the author of You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood