Two years on from my difficulties breastfeeding and with a healthy thriving toddler, I still feel so awful now some of my friends have subsequently had children and breastfed them.
At two weeks old my daughter hadn't regained birthweight and I was told to give over 500mls 'top ups' in 24 hours. She was vomiting this all up (I couldn't even get a third of that down her tbh) and I suspected this wasn't right, stopped the top ups and I paid an independent lactation consultant who gave me advise on positioning and attachment and said she didn't think there were any supply issues- I just needed to carry on BF her.
I really struggled with the new positions and trying to get her in them, especially at night my husband wanted to take the baby out of the room at one point as I was so wound up trying to get her to latch correctly.
The midwives were extremely skeptical and said she would have to be admitted if she didn't put weight on within 72 hours. I was really stressed and tearful.
The feeding specialist from the hospital agreed to see me too and said the new positioning was good and as she had dropped from 75th to 9th centile I could give top ups. The midwife was ringing me and scheduling every other day weigh ins. I was still struggling to latch the baby effectively consistently.
I knew the risk of top ups affecting my supply but I caved and said I'd give her two lots of formula in the night whilst I pumped whilst I got the hang of the new positioning and latching.
I spend all day watching videos of breastfeeding, pumping after feeds, and practicing latch. I pumped in the night but didn't attempt to latch her and gave her expressed milk and formula. When I did latch her in the night she vomited so I was afraid of trying again.
Of course we ended up finding one position we could consistently do- but my supply was destroyed by the night time disruption to feeding and ultimately lost the feeding relationship. It dragged on for many more miserable weeks and months with increasingly fraught efforts to sustain it but she ended up FF by four months. I ended up with severe PPD and nearly committed suicide.
I just can't seem to get over it and feel so guilty and culpable that I made the decisions that ultimately wrecked things.