When Breastfeeding Breaks Your Heart: How PIMS Affects Partners, Too

We don’t talk enough about what Perceived Insufficient Milk Syndrome (PIMS) does to partners.

We talk about latch. We talk about ounces. We talk about breastfeeding goals.

But we don’t talk about the partner who stands at the edge of the bed, watching the person they love dissolve in front of them.

Or the partner who’s up all night Googling how to help when she won’t stop crying.

Who can’t fix it.

Who would give anything to trade places—just to give her a break.

The Other Side of the Struggle

When we pitch Lybbie, it’s often the partners—husbands, dads, co-parents—who find us after the presentation, eyes wide with recognition.

They come up quietly.

They wait until the line dies down.

Then they tell us:

“This is why we never had a second kid.”

“I couldn’t go through that again. She was a shell of herself.”

“She wanted it so badly. And it just broke her.”

“I told her we weren’t breastfeeding the next baby. I couldn’t risk losing her again.”

They remember every detail.

The guilt. The helplessness. The shame that seeps into a relationship when one partner is unraveling and the other doesn’t know how to help.

They remember her blaming herself for something that was never her fault.

They remember how no one ever told her that rest was part of recovery.

That healing was the foundation for milk supply—not the reward for achieving it.

Torture in the Name of Love

Let’s be honest:

PIMS doesn’t just affect breastfeeding.

It affects marriages, identities, future family decisions.

I’ve seen moms torture themselves—staying up all night to pump every two hours, desperate to boost their supply, despite working 80-hour weeks and running on fumes.

I know, because I was one of them.

When I was a resident with my first baby, I’d spend my only night off in a 2-week stretch staying up all night—pumping, crying, repeating.

It didn’t work.

No surprise there.

But I blamed myself anyway.

Years later, when I was pregnant again, I asked a trusted lactation consultant what I could do differently to succeed with exclusive breastfeeding.

She looked at me with complete clarity and said:

“Of course you couldn’t make more milk, Andrea. You needed sleep.”

And in that moment, the truth hit me like a wave:

We normalize postpartum exhaustion—and then expect women to feed tiny humans without recovering.

A Different Outcome

With my second child, I gave myself permission to rest.

And guess what?

I was able to breastfeed exclusively.

Not because I tried harder.

Not because I finally figured out the “right” pump schedule.

But because someone gave me the missing piece: validation.

She gave me permission to treat rest as medicine.

To prioritize healing.

To stop blaming my body for failing—and instead understand that my recovery was the key to milk supply.

To the Partners Reading This

If you’re here because you’re watching someone you love suffer:

Please know this isn’t her fault.

And it’s not yours either.

You didn’t miss a trick.

You weren’t supposed to know how to “fix” this.

The system wasn’t built to support her—or you.

But we can do better.

PIMS isn’t just a lactation issue.

It’s a maternal health issue.

A relationship issue.

A mental health issue.

And we need to name it.

Talk about it.

Normalize rest.

Validate struggle.

And build systems that support families—not just feedings.

You are not alone.

And you are not powerless.

Sometimes, being the one who says “You need rest” is the greatest act of love there is.