With my first I did all my reading and although I was apprehensive and a little embarrassed (having been brought up with the whole sexual nature of breasts and how my artner would react etc) I was determined that it would be the best thing for my baby.

DS was induced at 36wks and had an underdeveloped suck reflex and jaundice which made him sleepy. Becuase of the lack of sucking my milk didn't come in until about day 9. I distinctly remeber day 4 at 4am when they were syringe comp feeding my little bub while I was hooked up to a breast pump exprerssing 2-3ml and the midwife yelling at me that I needed to have more than that, it just wasn't going to cut it and that my baby needed to be formula fed.

The next day the paed walked in and reved me again at how all this had happened, why didn't I say he wasn't feeding etc ( of course I didn't know he wasn't feeding - I would put him to the breast, he would suck at the nipple and fall asleep!) and then he yelled at the midwife for telling me not to bother breast feeding and told me to get back on that breast pump and stop the comp feeding.

2 wks later of expressing every feed and syringe feeding and then bottle feeding my MIL sugguested nipple shields. We went on to breast feed with shield for over 9mths before DS was ready to wean of the shields, we then BF until past 2yrs!

DD journey was a lot less dramatic with just the usual cracked nipples so we turned to the shields again but only for 3wks. DD is now successfully breast feed and occassionally bottlefeed and I lov ehte flexibility of doing both!