That's thing, I completely understand the doubt that we have as expectant mothers, goodness knows I had it too. And establishing breast feeding was really difficult for me, inverted nipples, failure to attach, cracked nipples etc etc meant that we used nipple shields for the first 12 weeks. But we got there and I breast fed DS for 21 months.

I think the problem is that we come across so many bad stories and old wives tales from well intentioned people, that we are left believing that there is a high probability that our bodies might not be capable of it. I think somewhere along the line the message is being misconstrued from 'breastfeeding can be difficult to establish' to 'it could be impossible for you' (which can be the case, but it is very rare).

I guess my point is that there are lots of things in life that require hard work to achieve, but when we say we want those things we don't feel the need to precurse it with 'if I can'. For example, I want to be a nurse/doctor/midwife/accountant, I want to run a marathon, I want to loose weight, I want to be a good parent, I want to win tattslotto.

It's like we go into breastfeeding doubting our ability to do it, rather than believing in ourselves and our bodies like we do in almost every other area of our lives.