At the time, my youngest was two years old and we had just stopped breastfeeding. It wasn’t a traumatic end, and I didn’t feel a bond had been severed. In fact, I felt relieved that she had decided to move on. There was no guilt; it felt seamless. Weeks later, though, my mood started to dip and I hit an absolute low.

Bryony Lewis, founder of breastfeeding keepsake company T & Belle and a mother of two, also struggled when her daughter started to wean. “It really hit me, especially as I wasn’t expecting any kind of mental health change,” she tells Strong Women. “It was so much more than grieving a past life stage. I felt down all the time. I couldn’t motivate myself to do things that we’d been enjoying doing before, like getting out of the house and going to baby groups.”

“I stopped breastfeeding and hit the darkest days of my life – why didn’t anyone warn me of the mental health implications?”