salsa, fionas :hugs: to you both. I hear you both. I would say from the level of guilt i have felt myself, and from the guilt i read about here and on other forums, women know ALL the risks of FFing and have it hammered home aplenty. It is the advice on HOW to BF which is missing in education - Barb has it spot on. Also, IMO, there could be a lot better provision at the government level for women who're struggling. I have a freind in Germany, when she started to have pre-term labour on and off in the 26th week the government PAID for a home help for her, so she could keep the baby in as long as possible. Luckily her uterus was irritable but not serius, he came at 40+3weeks, but she had that support the whole time until the birth. If she needed it now she and her baby could go into a rest home for mothers while a home help came to help her partner with the house and the older child - Germany is REALLY family-oriented instead of paying lip-service to being so and then making life with small children difficult/impossible.

My story was different to many because getting started was easier for me. I had done a lot of reading, had an undrugged and un-interfered-with homebirth and was lucky enough to get a very good feeder right from day one. I got to 5 months BFing and was going ok, but then i started to lose my supply.

I was losing my supply because:
My relationship had fallen apart
I'd had to find and move to a new flat with a 4 month old
I had a thyroid problem
I was an exhausted single parent
I was on the mini-pill and it was slowing my let-down

I began to top-up with FF because XP kept "accidentally" leaving my EBM out to spoil and because (i think) of the stress i stopped getting let-down for the breast pump so i was struggling more and more to replace it. When he began using FF all the time (despite the frozen EBM which is STILL in his freezer) i decided to give her it once a day to stop her getting tummy ache from having it for 4 feeds in a row once a week. My supply dropped a bit more. I got iller, i was thin, not horrendously thin but about 20kg lighter than pre-pregnancy and certainly thinner than i'd been since i was 17. I was so tired, my hair came out in handfuls (part post-baby, part thyroid problem - my eyebrows came out too), i had no help. I KNEW how to get my supply back, but i simply couldn't do any of it:

Go to bed for a weekend and feed feed feed - there was no-one to help in the house to make that even remotely possible.
Eat more/better - no time, no money, no transport, no-one to take the baby so i could shop/cook/eat in peace.
Cut out FF - couldn't because of XP
Cut out stress - i had my XP over everyday to see his daughter, so everyday i had to face more mean comments and difficulties, i was waiting for my benefits to be sorted and had no money most of the time, i didn't know how i'd be paying my rent at the end of the month, i was so worried all the time.
Get some help in the house - my mum is dead, the rest of my family are 200+ miles away. I had a few friends but they worked and had their own lives to live. Many of them tried but by chance my main support network had moved away to work elsewhere over the 6 months before dd was born (a time when those i'd been in Uni with were finishing their masters/moving to do their PhD's).
Get well again - my doctor was making noises about lifelong medication but i was concerned about entering into that! I thought perhaps once i'd weaned DD (which seemed to be happening anyway) i might recover. I didn't of course.
Stop the mini-Pill. My new DP (who actually i was only just seeing then and not sleeping with at all) was the only ray of sunshine in my life during that time. Because of how awful it had been with XP when DD was new i was planning on having my tubes tied ASAP but my GP said i had to wait at least a decade (he was right, it was a knee-jerk reaction on my part) and there was NO WAY i was having another baby. I really felt that if i fell PG i'd kill myself.

I knew all the risks of FFing, i knew HOW to BF, i knew WHAT i should be doing to improve my supply and get back on track and i just couldn't do any of it. I kept going to bed for weekends to replenish my supply (and having to get up as much as ever since there was no-one to look after me so i could look after DD). A slight lift by sunday night had vanished again by Monday night and by Wednesday i usually had even less than before the weekend. DD was hungry, dropping weight, not sleeping well and the more irritable she was, the more stressed i was. Round and round and round we went until i just gave up. We wound down to one feed a day and then i dropped that too to see if my thyroid would recover.

When i was BFing everyone was back-patting and smiling, but when it began to go wrong everyone was like "Oh well, just FF, she'll be fine" rather than giving up their own time to help. I think if society in general knew the things which would help nursing mothers do their important job (mothering, not just BFing) more easily a lot more people would be able to successfully BF.

Bec