Lee - yes I can tell. I posted very similar things to you with my first. It's hard when there is so much stuff being put into your head by mostly well meaning family, friends, strangers in supermarket aisles (yes, that happened to me), maternal nurses, doctors, the interweb, everything.

He's manipulating you? That's a good one! Pfffft to that.

I found a sling very useful for my first. He tended to cry less when I held him so the sling was great as it meant he could be held and I could do stuff - like hang on on bellybelly posting about how I was going bonkers. My little one would only sleep in the sling during the day for the first 3 months. I love my Close Baby Carrier for the first few months but an Ergo with an infant insert is also a good choice (and a longer term investment).

For what it's worth, I comp fed for the first 7 weeks due to low supply. At 7 weeks I stopped breastfeeding and moved to full formula feeding. It didn't make him more settled in any way. In hindsight I realised that the comp feeding was in part causing my supply problems and I didn't have the information I needed at the time to build my supply up to exclusively breast feed. If you don't have any supply issues (and the weight gain and nappies tells you all is good in that department) I'd stick with the breastfeeding.

If you want to 'give a bottle' for a break, perhaps look at expressing breast milk. I'm not an expert on that so if you are interested I'd pop over to that part of the forum and ask the lovely ladies there.

Feel free to come back with any thing else you need.

Fiona