I am sharing this with you guys because I felt like I didn't have anyone to talk to you and I felt embarrassed. We had problems since the beginning of breastfeeding so I ended up exclusively pumping. For a long time I've struggled with my mental health but surprisingly didnt have postpartum depression like I thought I was destined for. The first month of healing was difficult and having to pump and take care of baby was tiring but I managed and it was no biggie. After that it just went down hill. I became drained. Breastfeeding began to make me feel like I couldnt do anything with my life and like I couldn't enjoy anything and I began to hate it. It caused my confidence to go down and it made me feel horrible about myself. I felt like I couldn't take care of my baby properly because I was so busy pumping and it was strenuous. I kept pushing and pushing myself to do it at first because I wanted to give my baby my milk but eventually it just became about because I didn't want to be judge for not breastfeeding and I didn't want to feel like a failure. Putting myself through this struggle for months really hurt my mental health. I felt like stopping would make me a bad mom. But one day after dealing with a family emergency it woke me up. I realized I need to take care of myself and I can't do this anymore. So I'm slowly stopping and I feel like I made the absolute best decision I possibly could for my family. If you don't want to breastfeed, if you want to stop breastfeeding, if breastfeeding is causing you pain; it's ok to stop. You don't owe anyone anything and you are not a bad mother. You don't have to breastfeed if you don't want to and you don't have to drive yourself mad to do so. If it's hurting your health you don't have to continue it. I wanted to let people know this because i feel like too many women hurt themselves over this and no one deserves to feel as shitty as I did over breastfeeding. You owe nothing and you are a great mom for not breastfeeding if that is your choice and if that's what works best for your family