No I don't have to express every feed now which has been a massive plus over the weekend as we had a marathon trip to see relatives and friends and its was a relief to get to the hotel, and just feed him rather than faff about with bottles whilst he screamed. In the end I think he's managed about half and half over the course of the weekend which is a huge change. Next to no boob rage, no pain, no problems latching and decent length of feeds - its been a revelation.
I'm probably still going to continue to express to a certain extent as its useful from a practical point of view for going out (he's not mastered the art yet, so being discreet isn't exactly his strong point) and it means DH can feed him too. Given his age, being able to switch between feeding methods, is now going to be a useful skill to have too.
We saw friends over the weekend who have a couple of boys, one of whom is just a few months older. It was interesting what he said about feeding. Their first was formula feed and their second breastfeed. He has found it loads harder to bond with the younger one as he hasn't been feeding him. I bet that's never something that's considered in all this 'breast is best' malarkey which I think is possibly a shame for women who for whatever reason don't manage it.
Oddly enough I was reading a post on another thread last night that said that some babies who are combi-fed by bottle suddenly start breastfeeding between 12 - 16 weeks which I think is what has happened here. I've certainly not done anything special to get him to do it; its been very much been lead by his behaviour and bottle refusing.
If that's the case, I do find it even more frustrating. I think there is an over riding assumption that all babies should be able to breastfeed from birth which really doesn't seem to be the case at all. It seems that some babies may actually take a good while to learn it and its not so much of an instinctive thing and requires a certain amount of physical ability and skill on the part of the baby too. Instead women just end up feeling shit about it and quit thinking they are the rubbish one when it really is one of those things.
I think in hindsight at this point, I think I feel ironically pleased that things ended up going this way for us, as I think perhaps that some of the negatives have ended up being real positives.
We are going to try and get to a weigh in tomorrow, which will be interesting... I suspect we have had another growth spurt in spite of all the feeding issues over the last couple of weeks. Clothes he was fitting easily last week, have suddenly got smaller much to my annoyance! He'll be in 6 - 9 month stuff in January at this rate.
P.S. If you are travelling far over Christmas, I reckon 1h 50mins is about as far as you can get without stopping for a break judging how DS has reacted this weekend. He's been a little angel but that seemed to be his limit before we got protests. We had 10hrs of driving in the end which is far from ideal, but we had to go visit my grandmother as she is unable to travel and at 89 and in poor health, we really couldn't put it off any longer.