I have pretty much accepted that breastfeeding is over for us (DD is 6 months). I am still struggling to work out exactly what went wrong so I can avoid making the same mistakes next time.
Not sure if any of the organisations offer a debrief service & don't want to clog up their phone lines with a stream of self indulgent drivel so thought I'd chance my luck here! This is going to be loooong so don't feel compelled to read or reply
I wish I'd read up on breastfeeding before I started instead of limiting my reading to Gina Ford (which I realised wasn't going to work for us but still stuck in my head) and The baby whisperer (who's breastfeeding advice haunts me to this day).
DD was induced a few days early because she was measuring small. Birth wasn't too bad - quick ventouse because her heart rate dropped but she was fine and fed straight away. She was 5lb7 when she was born.
She slept a lot in the day for the first few days but I fed her every 3 hours as instructed by midwife and she cluster fed for about 6 hours in the night.
By day 4 I was feeling a bit shite (water infection & quite a lot of bleeding and clots) and knackered so DH was looking after her for most of the day and just bringing her to me for feeding. I think this might have played a part in things not going well & I should have kept her closer.
A week in and she was still cluster feeding all night eventually crashing out at 4am. I gave in and gave her a dummy and got 4 hours sleep. Also regret this.
Weight gain was reasonable - 4 or 5 oz a week but midwife had a thing about 'hind milk' and wanted me to keep her on one breast for 40 minutes at a time. In retrospect I think she was quite a fast feeder and this wasn't helpful.
I very rarely noticed her giving any early hunger signs - she never poked her tongue out so I never really knew how to feed her 'on demand' - I probably didn't feed her enough in the early days because I had the 3 hour thing so ingrained in my mind and was trying other things to comfort her because I didn't think she could be hungry (god I was so stupid )
By about 6 weeks she'd started getting really fussy at feeds & it was taking me most of the day to get her to have what I thought were decent feeds. We went to a baby cafe & advisor couldn't see anything wrong with latch and couldn't really give much advice. I tried to feed her more often but she wasn't very cooperative!
A few weeks of this & she was screaming at every feed-just wanting her dummy instead & getting very sleepy. Weight gain also dropped off to 3oz a week. Nappies were getting lighter and lighter.
We made it to 12 weeks before giving her a bottle of formula - she hadn't fed well all morning and was screaming but wouldn't latch on.
We went to an infant feeding specialist but she wouldn't even latch on so that she could watch a feed. The specialist suggested reflux which we had suspected (and were trying to manage without medication) and we got some ranitadine. This did seem to help her but I think by then the negative associations with breastfeeding were too ingrained.
I then started to express for her & we got by on almost exclusive expressing for another month. Latching got progressively worse but she was still having an occasional feed especially at night.
Gradually phased out expressing from 6 to 1 session per day and introduced more formula. She has really thrived & caught up with her weight gain. She's still titchy -I think that's the way she's meant to be.
Since she had a cold a few weeks ago she has lost her latch altogether so the only breastmilk she's getting now is a couple of ounces expressed per day.
I have accepted that I did the best I could in the situation but I wonder whether if I'd done my research I could still be breastfeeding today .