My DS was born with a cleft lip and palate. I was told during the pregnancy that it was very unlikely that he would be able to BF. We did try when he was born but he could not physicaslly do it. He can't feed from a normal bottle either, he needs special feeding bottles. I did the whole expressing full time and bottle feeding ebm for as long as I could...I got to about 3 months but the amount of work (I barely had time to spend with him I was always attached to the pump, or storing milk , or sterilising etc etc) plus recurrent bouts of mastitis eventually made me change to FF. I feel comfortable with the deicison I made but I still feel the need to justify why I'm not BF when someone asks. In fact most people assume I am BF which leads me to have to say I'm FF and then I always feel I have to then tell them the whole story about my son.

We all do the best we can and reading this post I think shows that most of us wish we were able to BF, all of us know the benefits of BF over FF and we have all made a difficult decision based on our individual circumstances. My son is thriving and therefore has been able to have his operations as early as possible. 20 years ago he would have had to be tube fed, now he can use a bottle. Funny thing is we would probably get less coments about FF if he had a tube...makes it more obvious he has a birth defect.
Hugs to everyone. Our babies are all happy and healthy, whether BF or FF. We are all just mums doing the best we can for our babies.