I'm one of those breastfeeding success stories *despite* the breastfeeding nazis, not because of them.

DD#1 was very sleepy when she was born (blame the peth) and they came along, manhandled me, shoved boob in mouth, insisted I express, then complained about how much I expressed. The usual, I'm sure you can relate. They didn't want me to leave the hospital until BF was established. Of course, after I got home, drugs wore off, baby woke up, my milk came in, and everything worked just fine.

DD#2 was the ultra-heavy-duty sucking model of baby. She'd suck a tennis ball through a hose, and she had apgar 9 and 9. So of course she latched on enthusiastically as soon as she was let loose near a boob, and wasn't keen on being un-latched so we were giving her fingers until we got a dummy. My milk came in on day 1 she was sucking that much. I didn't get any BF advice at all with this baby, come to think of it ...

DS is sort of an average of the other two. Wasn't sure what to do with nipples (you just lick them, right?) so it took until he was 6 hours old to have more than a cursory suck each feed. He kept falling asleep. Midwife said I wasn't feeding him often enough to get my milk in and supply up and that I should express. Pft. He got a touch of jaundice for a day or two, my milk came in on about day 3, baby worked out that boobies are the best thing EVER when that happened, jaundice cleared up, and now he's well on his way to being a roly-poly little barrel of lard like babies should be.

Bottom line - don't let anyone rush you or hassle you or get you stressed. If it is hurting to feed, change positions or try and sneak more boob into their mouth so it doesn't hurt. They really do need that bottom lip folded down like all the brochures say. If you've got an existing crack it'll hurt like hell as they latch on and then settle a bit later in the feed, and if you're not using the same angle that made the crack it WILL heal in a few days. Once they fall asleep on the boob and you can tell they're not actually sucking for milk (they don't swallow, or their tongue vibrates in this really freaky way), lick your finger, slip it in the corner of their mouth and get them off or you'll get sore nipples from oversucking. And don't bother with schedules, feed them when they're hungry, not by the clock.

And of course, try and relax and get in the mindframe that you're going to succeed by default, not fail Breastfeeding nazis make you feel like you're going to be a failure. If they do that, tell em to go away.