Hugs Hun. Sounds like you didn't have an easy time of it.
I hated lansinoh - much preferred the hydrogel breast discs (Coles and good chemists - ww don't stock them).
Have you checked about the requirements of the hospital you're birthing at re formula? The 2 places I went to had to have my signed permission to give any formula. I couldn't see ds2 for about 5 hours after birth. Def not an ideal start, but he was in special care and the epi hadn't worn off so I was bed- bound. I passed some of the time by hand expressing those tiny drops of colostrum for them to finger feed him.
I am passionately pro-breast feeding. HOWEVER... I look back on the horrible time I had (despite lots of support from healthcare professionals and aba) and I wonder if I should have gone to formula. I've had mastitis 14 times (4 for 1 and 10 for the other, including a trip to the hospital), I endured MONTHS of agony and I expressed full time for a year. It was a really traumatic experience. Not really ideal when you have little babies to look after and (hopefully) enjoy.
So my gentle advice is to be kind to yourself and enjoy your little one. If breast feeding works, it works, but if it doesn't and YOU feel satisfied that you've tried everything you want to try to be able to fix it, it's ok to give up.
I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who replied to this post, all the advice given has been so helpful. Although we are still a long ways from establishing good breastfeeding I am in a much better situation than last time, at least my little guy likes to be on the breast, we have been comping him as I don't have the supply (working on that). On day two he wouldn't take to the breast at all, but thanks to this thread I knew what to do (hours of skin to skin) meant i was able to turn things around. I also limited my visitors this time. So thank you ladies.
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