{This is going to be long, sorry}
13 years ago now. DS born, straightforward, with hindsight mildly jaundiced, observed having first feed in the delivery room, felt quite odd, no sensation in particular tho I was expecting pain or a feeling of fluid coming or something. No comment from the mw that I recall but she was quite busy trying to stitch me up and in the end sent me to be stitched up in theatre so dh with ds. Difficult night in observation area, stone-faced midwives appearing at various points when ds was crying and doing the baby/boob push. DS would go on for a bit then come off again asleep. Again no particular words or description of what I was trying to achieve. Postnatal ward for 36 hours, similar except that they took ds and fed him some expressed milk for a few hours so I could sleep, otherwise similar short feeds, advice to me varied wildly with the person attempting to help, including dm and dmil neither of whom managed to bf any of their children. Home, ds still a bit jaundiced with hindsight. One night of sleep, then after that a sequence of days asleep and nights of 45 minute feeds then dropping asleep for 10 minutes then 45 minute feeds again. Told by the mw that he was still jaundiced and I must wake him every 3 hours to feed but I didn't understand how important this was - I did do it, but didn't struggle for ages if he just dropped off again. Tried a range of breastpumps, in every case I was lucky if 40 minutes pumping would give enough to cover the bottom of a bottle, but I was reading info by that point and knew that not everyone can pump effectively and it doesn't necessarily mean I didn't have enough milk. We limped on like this for four weeks, including being discharged by the postnatal midwife. I got random amounts and types of advice, all based on 'you're doing fine, looks good, maybe try X' and eventually sent to the GP by the HV as ds was losing (can't remember how much). GP sent us to A&E and the paed admitted us as they were concerned re the persisting jaundice. On the ward round they said they weren't too worried about the jaundice but he was failing to thrive and I would need to top up with formula. DS wolfed down a bottle and slept properly at last, and so did I, at last.
36 hours later we were doing absolutely fine and discharged, still bfing then topping up. BFing checked by specialist nurse on the paediatric ward, absolutely fine, doing well. Asked them if I should go to the specialist bfing clinic at the hospital (run on a VOLUNTARY basis by experienced midwives) and they were quite sniffy about it and said that a lot of mothers found the midwives there very brusque and hard to take, though I could go if I wanted. I didn't.
After 11 weeks, when I was still mixed feeding but decided I would like to try to increase the amount I was breastfeeding, I finally went to that breastfeeding clinic. They took ONE look at me, pulled out a picture and said 'you're doing it wrong, you need to do it like this'. For 11 weeks I had had no idea what 'nipple to nose' meant, and with one look at an actual picture of how to do it, I finally understood. DS probably got more milk in that clinic session than he had for about a week beforehand.
Having said all that - I tried twice to reduce the amount I was breastfeeding and ds lost both times, and eventually at 21 weeks I just said 'enough of this shit' and formula fed, but at least it was my decision and I was OK with it by the end.
I simply don't know what the answer is. It is incredibly frustrating, and clearly a common theme, how many people will tell you you're doing fine when you're not - I don't know what specialist breastfeeding expertise really looks like but if a specialist tells you your latch is OK I would like to know how they know. It is frustrating that nobody said to me that women with PCOS sometimes have a bit more trouble getting bf established and may need more support, but a) maybe this is not true and b) presumably they think it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I personally think that in fact I did not have enough milk, at least partly because ds and I never got established, and partly because realistically there must be a range of milk production levels among women - from copious to nonexistent only-just-enough-if-everything-goes-right, and I was on the thin end of that range. It is easy to take things the wrong way in the early days - so I was much impressed by Libby Purves' description of the chaos of the early weeks of breastfeeding, so that I didn't see that our 45 minute 'feeds' and 10 minute sleeps, all night every night, were not normal - not ALL the time. Your frame of reference is so nonexistent as a first time mother.