Not everyone can breastfeed

I have had 5 children and my first 3 were pretty easy to breastfeed. Of course, there was a pain barrier to get through (very, very few avoid that) and I did have mastitis a couple of times, but it was not a difficult thing for me to do and I loved every minute.

And then I had the twins.

I had no idea that the baby's ability to latch is so crucial. My first 3 pretty much swallowed my whole breast and made it all so much easier. Suddenly I had 2 babies who seemed to just want to nibble on the end of the nipple. Their latch improved slightly, but they were still not taking in enough of the breast to prevent me from getting damage. I had everyone trying to help me and the Breast Feeding Counsellors from the local Health Centre were brilliant, but ultimately I realized that neither of these two little babies were going to do it properly. So I made the sad decision to only feed one, which would allow my breasts a chance to recover between feeds (the milk supply was not a problem). It was easy to choose as my son had shown he had bad gastric problems with bottle milk and so my daughter went on the bottle. And she was fine. In fact, it made it very easy to feed them both at night - my husband took my daughter and I breastfed my son.

I still had big problems with mastitis and ductal thrush, which meant that for a long time I had to take painkillers in order to feed. I was just so determined to do it that I carried on even though I would be weeping with the pain as I fed him. After about 3 months it got easier and I continued to feed him for another 5, when he suddenly started dropping feeds. I was surprised, as I had always had to wean off my babies (at around a year), but he knew what he wanted (or didn't want). It was only a matter of a couple of weeks and he stopped breastfeeding altogether.

If I had never successfully breastfed, I would certainly have given up in the early stages. It would not have seemed worth being so ill and in so much agony. But I did struggle through and I'm glad that he had such a good start. I don't suppose that either will be any the different for one being bottle and one being breast. In fact, my son has always been the sickliest of the two (although that could be argued, how bad would he have been without a breastfed start?).

All I am trying to say, in my roundabout way, is that if the latch is poor and doesn't improve, then switching to a bottle could make life much easier. You want to enjoy your baby, not dread the next feed. Breastfeeding IS one of life's great pleasures and there is no doubt that it is best for your baby, but there has to be a point when other considerations take over. Don't be a martyr!

And if you want to see my lovely husband's contribution - he did a chart at the time to record how the change over from breast to bottle went - you can see it was not overnight.

--Mad Margaret (talk) 18:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)