Why am I not glowing with happiness whilst breastfeeding?

[buterflies]

I feel conned! The NCT etc are always going on about how wonderful breastfeeding is but I am just not feeling the love. Lil one is 9 weeks and feeds well but I would much rather give him a bottle, as then I know how much he is having and am still not comfortable feeding in public.
I feel just as close to him when he has a bottle, more so as he maintains eye contact.
Is it possible to exclusively express as I want him to get the goodness of breast milk but am worried my milk will dry up.
Am I the only one who feels this way?

BigBoPeep - some refs to explain and help:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3564937?dopt=Abstract

www.jacionline.org/article/PIIS0091674905029210/fulltext '......these proteins or peptides survive digestive enzymes, become absorbed into the blood stream and are subsequently secreted in biological fluids.....' talking about peanuts in that case, but prob same mechanism.....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1990.tb02798.x/abstract;jsessionid=21BD020E7A693A11D5146807ABD0B9B0.d03t03

adc.bmj.com/content/92/10/902.full - this is nice and recent, and proposes a mechanism whereby cows milk protein survives the digestive process and get into the milk via the blood.

hmmm, interesting! thanks!

BigBoPeep I haven't got a clue. My first DS was lactose intolerant which is naturally present in breast milk. Goodness knows how cow milk protein gets in but I suppose its like medicine or alcohol which both pass through to breast milk.

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Bit of advice needed. DS is 10 weeks now. I am BF all night and only giving one bottle in day time but over the last two days he has been going 3 or 4 hours between feeds during the day but just one and a half hours during the night. Is this a growth spurt or has he got days and nights mixed up?? I am so tired I really need a better routine. Any advice welcome

buterflies, this cold be something he just changes by himself - but one thing to try would be to bf more often in the day. 3-4 hourly is not often for a 10-week old, and even for a grown adult :)

You'd need to be consistent to enable this to work....and maybe it's unrelated anyway. A call to any bf helpline would be a good way of exploring your options.

Hope things get sorted :)

I know everyone says this, but it does get easier. I really, really didn't enjoy breastfeeding for the first three months, but something just clicked around the fifteen week mark and it got much easier (ironically just as I was about to give in and try and switch to bottles). Now at five months I would almost say I enjoy it! I found it took time to build up confidence about feeding in public, but now I feed everywhere and anywhere and have never had a negative reaction.

my advice would be cosleeping butterflies! I feel as well rested as i ever have thanks to that - think i lose 20 mins of sleep, just enough to latch her on each time and then I'm back off - biology and thousands of years of evolution takes care of the rest

Mine goes 3-4hrs between feeds quite a lot and is a HUGE baby, i wouldn't worry aout trying to cram more in unless they are losing weight? I know when I hospital the nurses tried to make mine feed more often - she just would NOT and that was that!

Just to add my tenpence, I didn't find feeding to be all glowing and lovey dovey eye contact either!
I had huge trouble bfing for the first 4 months, DS was early, had tongue ties, and had a lot of formula in the first month due to his size. The incredibly un-fun combination of all these things made bf painful for months, so it was most def not a bonding experience! I used anything I could as a distraction, I never looked him in the eye while feeding, and watched a lot of shit TV. Things got better after 4mo, and were fine but not enjoyable for the next few months, but after 8/9mo the tide changed and it's finally a lovely experience! He's 12mo now, and feeds are lovely. I am really bloody stubborn
I talk to him about our day at his evening feed and he's often giggling while latched on, it's very sweet.

Don't worry about public feeding - it gets so much easier! I didn't get used to it for months as latching on was a nightmare, but now it's a piece of piss! Until it got easy I used a nursing cover, and varying scarves and muslins draped strategically...

The difficulty you could run into with expressed bottle feeding is what happens when he has a growth spurt and needs more? As you'd be pumping, he wouldn't be stimulating your supply directly, so you would prob end up supplementing with formula, which in turn could diminish your existing supply.

Sorry for the waffling... Hope it gets better for you soon.