I'm glad someone picked up on newqueen's post because it really pissed me off. You only have to read the stories on here to see that for a large number of women, there are some very big issues surrounding their feeding decisions. I know that I was determined to bf, I read the websites, I read the leaflets. But when you're in hospital, with your first baby, totally shagged out, emotional and just a bit scared, you tend to take the advice of people who you think know best. And when they tell you that your dd's blood sugar is dangerously low, they are going to send her down to SCBU and need to give her formula before she drops any more, then you tend to believe them and agree to anything, especially when this is at 2am on your first night as a mother.
My bf 'training' consisted of the mw at the birth thrusting dd at me 1 hour after birth when I was leaning over a kidney dish being sick and saying, 'here, you need to feed her', then walking off and leaving me to it.
The only other 'help' I got was a not very nice mw telling me that as I had failed at bf, I'd better start expressing. She gave me some sort of container, a leaflet and walked out. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, no one showed me or went through it with me and I felt like crap because I assumed that this was natural and everyone could do it except me. By the time I left the hospital 3 days later, all my forms had ff on them and that was that. Visiting mw told me not to worry about it, ff was fine. I went to a bf clinic on day 6 to get some help. They manhandled my breasts, made a few noises about them being very big and it being a problem, and that was that.
So no, bf 'didn't work out'. That suits me as a statement because the tale is long and boring, as you can see, and actually, nearly 12 months down the line, I still feel like a total failure to think about it.
Some of us do give a fuck you know, but we're ot all lucky enough to have had the same help and support.