Prama, I also had a horrid midwife in hospital who kept shoving Angus onto my boob so roughly during one shift that I got cracked and blistered nipples which then bled for about 4 weeks. Due to this one off trauma, they took ages to heal and I dreaded him crying for a feed, as I just wanted one more hour to heal up, and to not have the pain. We also had other issues, bad reflux, poor weight gains, poor hunger levels, blocked duct and white spot, and mastitis. The worst was treating the duct and white spot (it involved a needle.....) then feeding every 2 hrs. I used to take panadol and cry my eyes out for every feed for a week back then. Like you, I also had to feed him, then pump, then top up with the EBM, then sterilise everything and start again - it took so much of my time I couldn't eat. In my heart though I never wanted to do anything but BF, so in spite of the pain, the dread, the fear, and the lack of sleep, we kept going. We hit our straps at 6 weeks old and haven't looked back since, and he's 8 months at the end of this week.

What I am trying to say is that BF is really hard and quite painful in those early days and I'm sorry nobody told you about the reality - I was told and I'm glad I was prepared. I can understand how you feel you lost time to yourself with baby coming early, but I think that might be a different issue to the feeding one. I also have the Avent manual pump and it was a godsend, very gentle and you can vary it easily yourself, so it was great.

If you can maintain your supply by pumping while you heal up a bit, and recover a little more, you buy yourself some time to think about BF'ing again. I know in those early days I wasn't capable of a rational decision so I just took what people told me - luckily they knew my strong desire to BF so that's all they told me! Perhaps in a week or so you may have healed and recovered enough to try again with a kind, gentle and supportive LC - kind of like starting again, make it your 'first feed'.

Good luck Prama (PS and welcome to your lovely little baby)