Well done to everyone with small, monumental successes and hugs and tea to everyone having problems.
I really feel for everyone who's in the same position I was not even a couple of weeks a go! I want to offer a bit of hope for the future and a bit of hindsight.
Zara, Cast out all feelings of rejection. He isn't rejecting you at all even though it feels that way. He is hungry, he wants food, he knows it's there but he can't get it. He is crying because he wants to eat, not because he doesn't want to breast feed. The advice I was given was to keep on trying to latch him on over and over again. Looking back I think that doing this built up my baby's frustration and did not help him learn how to feed. If you think about it from your baby's point of view, he is hungry, his dinner is there, but it keeps being taken away from him. For him to be able to learn to feed properly he needs to be hungry enough to want to feed but not so ravenous that he's frantic and he needs to be reasonably calm and not screaming. If he's screaming at your breast, I wouldn't put yourself and him through the trauma, just stop! My DS only latched after I had actually given up and stopped trying so hard. Give yourself a break for a day or so!
I think what helped for me was getting him sucking my thumb for comfort. He then got more used to having something fleshy in his mouth, rather than a plastic thing. Once he was sucking my thumb for comfort lots of the time I'd express a tiny bit at a time and let him suck it off. Then once he was calmer I would swap for a nipple, having um got things started a bit. You need to break the association of your breast with stress and hunger and work on him associating it with comfort, even when not latched on. You need lots and lots of cuddles with your baby on your chest. Don't let your family hog them all!
It helps if you stimulate your nipple so that it's the right sort of shape for him to latch on to- erect, not flat otherwise he'll just find himself with a mouthful of flesh rather than a teat that he can suck from. Rather than trying to latch him on, if there's a bit of milk on your nipple he can lick it and get the idea that it's there. You could try stroking his lips up and down which stimulates the rooting reflex. (you can supposedly stroke their cheeks too, but that made my baby shake his head franticly which was no good.)
You can see if you can get him to do this with your thumb and with a bottle too, don't give him the milk unless he has opened his mouth for it. Your baby needs to make a bit of effort in feeding instead of simply having something put in his mouth for him.
I also think time was important. It sounds a bit silly, but I genuinely think that for the first month or so my baby's mouth was too little to cope with a big mouthful of areola, which is what they need to be able to feed correctly. I also found that once my supply settled down a bit he got the hang of latching on to a softer breast that I could manipulate more than a round hard one full of milk.
Do you think there are any physiological things that might be making it hard to feed? Look at the breastfeeding videos and see how you compare. Do you have small nipples, flat nipples or really big ones that might be causing your baby problems?
I think it's important to let go of any hangups about the way that you feed your baby. In some respects, the want to breastfeed can end up being sort of selfish, rather than in the baby's interests. Yes it's 100% the best thing for your baby nutritionally speaking, but don't put yourself and your child through hell to get there. Take each day as it comes, get breast milk into your baby in a bottle if that's what they need. Sometimes what they need isn't what all the information you're bombarded with tells you is the best thing for them. When that's the case you just have to be strong, practical and suppress your own feelings of guilt, put aside your expectations and play it by ear. Listen to what your baby is telling you, not what your leaflets are telling you. They will need a strong mummy who will do what's best for them, not a stressed grieving mum. The stress and heart ache will not help supply. He might latch on, hopefully he will, but you need to be able to seal with it if he can't/won't. Getting him feeding from the breast is the best scenario yes, but it's also not the end of the world if he doesn't. You will feed him and do what's best for him no matter what. If it's anyone failing at this breast feeding lark, it's him not you!
Babies eh, it's meant to be the most natural thing in the world, you stick your boob in, the milk comes out! If only it could be that simple!