Hello,
I am really in need of some sane people to give me some perspective. A very brief bit of background: I had my lovely little girl 18 days ago, the birth was quite traumatic, a really hard and fast induced labour with no pain relief (midwives were rubbish), then DD's blood glucose levels crashed so she was in special care for 5 days and I had all kind of blood pressure nonsense so was put on quite strong meds and kept on a different ward in hosp although I could and did visit whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted (ie had no sleep as I was up with her the whole time).
The end result was that DD needed to be formula fed (and was on an IV for a day) and I was told I could breastfeed as a top up if I wanted to. But my body was so screwed up and I wanted to spend time with DD rather than expressing so I only managed a bit of breastfeeding for 14 days. By that time we were home, DH was back at work and I was struggling to feed DD the required amount of formula (to make sure her blood glucose stabilised) as well as expressing so I just had to stop before I imploded.
DD is thriving, she has already put on just over a pound, sleeps well and is bright and alert when she is awake. But I just can't help feeling I have let her down by not being able to breastfeed; the reality is my body just couldn't produce enough and I was flogging myself with the breast pump and making myself really miserable.
I know it's daft and I am really grateful that we both pulled through the birth and the days after it, I guess this just isn't what I'd hoped for and all the medical people I have spoken to have been quite dismissive of my decision to go 100% formula.
I just feel terrible. Can anyone tell me if this feeling goes away? Surely it's better for DD to be having formula than having a depressed mum and ropey old breast milk? I keep telling myself at least she got a good amount of colostrum and that two weeks of a bit of a breast milk is better than none but I think because the decision was forced on us by circumstances beyond our control, I am struggling with feeling like a rubbish mum. I really did try but the thing that really broke me was when lovely little DD stopped latching on when I did try breast feeding and I thought I didn't have much chance of ever getting to breastfeed exclusively if my body was still not up to speed and she had stopped being able to latch.
Surely if formula was that bad, the hospital wouldn't have put her on it in the first place? And at the moment, she needs every calorie she can get, and as I understand it, formula has more calories than breast milk? 
And just to highlight how ridiculous I am actually being, I was formula fed from birth and don't feel that I missed out and yet I am beating myself up about this. Soooooo daft!
Sorry for the ramble ... And advice much appreciated,
Thank you for reading my rant 