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 :)