Adhd, breastfeeding, and maybe my career isn’t ruined forever? 🤯

So, I’ve always had some executive function struggles, but I was pretty successful at work (struggled at school). Then my kid came along, and covid, and my company was acquired, and things have been awful at job after job. I was diagnosed with ADHD again (was diagnosed in high school but forgot) and tried some meds. Turns out, stimulant meds are catastrophic for me (spent months out of disability leave, unable to stand for 5 minutes or walk around the block).

I’ve been barely able to keep a job, in part due to executive function challenges. I was starting to accept that this was just the way it is now, even though we need me to work, so I have to find some way to work.

The other night, a friend told me that she learned that low estrogen (which breastfeeding is a low estrogen state) causes low dopamine, which obviously causes big problems for ADHD. I looked it up and it sounds like it really is a known thing.! I nursed my daughter until I weaned last fall to take fertility meds to get pregnant, and got pregnant within a few months. Pregnancy is hugely disabling for me. But, the notion that when I wean my last kiddo, my brain might work again?!!!!

I’m not just broken and burnt out forever, and might actually be able to return to part of my former powerhouse self someday? It feels like a financial game changer. I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with barely being able to muddle through in my career but needing to work and struggling and hating it. But maybe there’s just a few more years of that, and not another 30-40 years!