i can't breastfeed..

We made the final decision to bottle-feed formula to our son on day 3 in postnatal. It wasn't a difficult decision to make but it also wasn't our plan from the beginning. I would have loved to breastfeed my son, it just wasn't going to work out. Some people might say I didn't try hard enough, or think that I made a completely wrong choice cause there are people who are against not breastfeeding your baby. The thing is I did try and it didn't work, it wasn't going to work and in the long run if I was struggling to breastfeed or even express then my baby wasn't going to get enough food which left us with bottle-feeding formula.
We are happy with our decision.
I was able to properly breastfeed my son once in the first half hour of his life. It was a wonderful experience. Skin to skin, feeding my son for the first time. However, it was difficult. Tobias was born small, weighing 5lb 7oz. He only had a little mouth and he struggled to latch on properly.
The next problem.. I have very sensitive breasts and my nipples are easily irritated. The moment he wasn't able to latch on properly, my nipple ripped/cracked from him sucking on the end. I fed him from both breasts and both times he failed to latch fully a couple times before getting it right. This meant both my nipples were then ripped and for the next day they were stinging from any slight touch.
This could be normal and I could have pushed through the pain to feed my son. I did try. A while later when I tried to feed him again, he wouldn't latch on at all.. somehow he just couldn't get on even with midwives trying to help me. So I tried hand expressing, which I was able to get enough to feed my son. Back to my sensitive breasts.. My breasts have multiple cysts in them, heaps of small ones and a few quite big, painful ones. Expressing was really painful and I tried pushing through that pain to get food for my son. After a day I couldn't even bare to touch my chest. Just the fabric of my t-shirt shifting stung my nipples and my cysts were aching from expressing.
At this point they started giving us some formula to feed our baby. I was planning on giving my chest a rest and trying again, which I did. The next day I tried to breastfeed again and, like the last time, again he failed to be able to latch on at all and just didn't seem to want to. So I tried the pump. I used the pump on both sides for 10 minutes on a low-medium setting and managed to get some out. My right breast is the most painful with 2 large cysts and majority of the rest of my breast filled with small cysts. I had to use a very low setting to express my right side because it was almost completely unbearable, even on the low setting.
I could tell straight away that I was going to struggle to even express breastmilk to feed to my son, so even when we started to think "maybe we can mix feed, breastmilk and formula?" we soon realised I wasn't even going to be able to that.
It might sound like I barely tried, sometimes I sit there and think "did I try hard enough?" "should I have just pushed through the pain?".
But really, if I was going to struggle to express because of the pain from my cysts then I wasn't going to be able to feed my son enough for him to grow healthy. So we finally decided that we would just formula feed our baby.
And it is working. Our son eats (drinks) plenty. He was born weighing 5.7lbs. He is now 4 weeks old and weighs 8.4lbs! He is growing at a good rate. My small little man is chunking up! He is healthy and happy.
There is nothing wrong with our decision to not breastfeed. If I could, I would. It's just not possible at this stage.
I'm going to be going in to get my breasts checked again and hopefully have something done about my cysts. When I first found out about my cysts a couple years ago they told me that they should go away on their own but they havn't yet so I may need to just get them removed, at least the larger, more painful ones.
Hopefully I will be able to get my chest sorted out and maybe by the time I have my next child (not for a while) I will be able to try breastfeeding again and succeed. But even if when the time comes and it doesn't work out again I will still be alright with the decision to formula feed. I will not allow myself to feel bad that I can't breastfeed, nor will I allow anyone else to make me feel bad.
There is nothing wrong with you if you are unable to breastfeed. My mother couldn't breastfeed me or my sister and fed us on formula, we turned out completely fine and when she did start feeding us on formula (after trying to breastfeed for a while) we grew and gained weight.
If you can't breastfeed don't let other people tell you that you are a bad person or that you aren't trying hard enough. It is no one's business but your own what your decision is. They don't know how much you might have tried and they don't need to.
Do what works for you and your child. I am and we are happy.
Oh and it also means that my husband can help out in the middle of the night when Toby wakes up needing to feed. Nothing wrong with that :)

i have a baby!

My labour/birth was good. Thats what the midwives, doctors, my mum and my husband all say. And it's true. It was a very good labour, even I must admit that and it was the first time I'd given birth so I have nothing to compare it to.
I think the fact that it was a good birth was a blessing because of all the (slight) stress and anxiety surrounding my labour and pregnancy at the end.
At 28 weeks pregnant there were some concerns that our baby was smaller than he should be at that stage, so from then till I gave birth I had a scan every 2 weeks to monitor growth and sometimes even another scan in between to check for other things. The growth scans began to show good results and our boy was on track to be a healthy baby at least 7lbs in size.
Sunday 18th February (39 weeks pregnant), I felt no baby movements all day which was very unusual because our boy was a total wriggler, always moving and kicking me in the side. I called my midwife at 8:30pm and was at the hospital at 9pm hooked upto the CTG monitor to check baby was ok. He was.. oh and as soon as the machine was on monitoring his heart rate, he started moving. Gave us all a scare for nothing. Even still a doctor came in to see me and ask about me personally, if I was feeling well, had any pains etc. I had a rash on my hands and itchy feet which apparently could mean I had this liver condition that could come from my placenta. I don't know the exact details but its not common in pregnancy and a bit indicator is that the bottoms of your feet are itchy. They took my blood and had them sent for results. I still don't have those results and even if I did have the condition, its gone now, as its one that usually goes away as soon as your placenta is out. The doctor did however book me in for an ultrasound the following morning just to check baby out more.
So, Monday 19th February at 10am I came in for a scan to check baby. A couple hours waiting for a doctor to come give us results and being hooked up to the CTG monitor again, we were then told that the scan indicated that our baby had stopped growing and my placenta looked like it was dying. They could see that our baby was conserving energy and sending nutrients from the placenta to specific organs but wasn't getting those nutrients everywhere.
The doctor decided that they wanted me to come in for induction that evening. We went home, grabbed our hospital bags, got something to eat and heading back to the hospital that afternoon. Waited in a delivery suite room for a few hours and then at 9:45pm doctor came in to get induction started. As they were about to start the procedure they'd chosen to start my induction, my waters broke and about 5 minutes later I had my first contraction. It seemed that it was time for me to go into labour anyway and they didn't even have to induce me.
I was kept hooked upto a CTG monitor the whole way through my labour and I stayed lying on the bed, on my side. My plan during my pregnancy was that I was going to keep moving and be upright during labour to help with the process but that plan went out the window, especially when my contractions caused lower back pains and closer to the end that pain spread to my hips and upper legs. My husband spent the whole time rubbing my back through every single contraction and giving me encouraging words, letting me know I could do it.
My mum was also there to hold one hand while my other hand squeezed hard onto anything I could grab.
From 10pm - 3:15am I pushed through every contraction without any pain relief (other than my husbands back rubbing). Then I asked to try the gas, which is quite interesting. The gas did not help with the pain at all, I felt every contraction, but it did however make me feel very floaty and inbetween contractions I had a short period of time where I felt a bit more rested/relaxed.
At 3:30am a doctor came in for an examination and told us I was 4cm dilated.
From that information I thought it was gonna be a long while before our baby decided to come out. So I continued to push through my contractions with just the gas even as the pain got worse.
Then at 4:45am I felt the most intense burning pain I've ever experienced and I asked for an epidural (something I had planned not to have, but it hurt so bad) only to be told that it was too late because that burning pain meant that he was coming.
I pushed and pushed through that horrible burning pain and at 5:02am on Tuesday 20th February our beautiful baby boy was born.
He came out easily and I didn't need any stitches at all.
Our boy was born completely healthy despite his small size and weight of 5lb 7oz. He was so tiny! When it came to dressing him none of the newborn clothes we bought with us fit him, so my mum had to go out later that day and buy us a bunch of prem baby clothes (and even some of those were and still are loose on him).
Tobias George Rowley is 2 weeks old today, still small wearing prem clothes, but he now weighs 6lb 8oz! which is amazing and means he's healthy and eating well.
Still adjusting to our new life as parents and can't believe that we have a baby but we couldn't be happier and love our little man more than anything in this world. Our greatest adventure has begun.