FTM gave birth 8 days ago. Baby girl has refused to breastfeed since birth. I’ve talked to countless nurses and lactation consultants and I’ve tried all of their tips and tricks and nothing has worked. Every time I try to latch her she gets extremely irritable and pushes me away. We ended up formula feeding in the hospital. They gave me a pump to use but I couldn’t really get anything until a couple of days ago when my milk finally came in. Now she’s about 50/50 formula and breast milk fed from the bottle.

I’m devastated that I can’t nurse my baby. I feel like such a huge failure as a mother and I’m so worried about not being able to bond with her. All the nurses have told me to keep doing skin on skin with her which I’ve been trying to do but do you know how difficult it is to constantly be dressing/undressing a newborn? And myself?

Taking care of a newborn is hard enough and now we have the extra work of making bottles, formula, pumping, washing bottles/pump parts, etc. It seems like I have no time for anything else at all. Plus the pump I bought before baby was born is just a single electric because I didn’t think I’d have to pump this much or this early. Pumping takes forever and I’m just so exhausted. :( I want to pump enough so that I can feed her 100% breast milk but it’s so hard to keep up and there’s no way I’m pumping through the night.

Any advice or words of encouragement for this tired mama?