Josa Young couldn’t understand why people preferred to fiddle with formula, bottles and sterilising but with the birth of her third child that all changed…

Before my first baby was born in 1989, I steeped myself in Sheila Kitzinger. I understood the importance of feeding soon after birth, and did so, falling in love with Maud just as she began to suck. I was au fait with gathering the nipple up like a Dorothy bag and stuffing it into her placid jaws. A passing midwife commented, ‘You were obviously born to do that’. Over the next 10 days another midwife came to visit and weigh her – Maud lost very little weight and was soon gaining.

When Archie was born three years later, there was no soreness and the nipples were still in full battle order. By the end of the first week he was a whole pound heavier.

It was a different story with Tolly, born a few months ago. He weighed 8lbs 3oz (3710g) at birth, a well-grown, plump baby. I latched him on in the prescribed fashion, but he wasn’t too interested. During night two, it was a different story – he wanted to suck all night. Against all advice about not letting the baby use you as a dummy, I let him.

By morning I was very sore. I rubbed on some cream. It made no difference. My nipples looked red and rough. Feeding started to become agony. I had to do it every three hours, and I dreaded it. He fought the nipple, jumping on and off, but seemed willing to suck anything else.

Then the milk came in, just when far too many visitors had come to admire him. As time passed, it got worse. My right nipple seemed to be missing several layers of skin at its peak, while my left had a deep crack in the side that opened when he fed. When he was sick – frequently – blood poured out of his mouth. Like a Masai warrior, he was taking a mixture of blood and milk with every feed.

When we were alone, I would look at him lying on my lap and weep. He cried and cried. I thought there was something terribly wrong. To make matters worse, no midwife came near me for days and days. I tried telephoning to ask for advice, but they seemed clueless. He looked skinny by this time and all his birth plumpness had vanished.

Babies are meant to regain their birth weight by day 10. When a midwife finally turned up to weigh him, Tolly had lost 300g. I was horrified. She said she couldn’t sign me off until he had regained his birth weight, and why didn’t I try some formula? When I said I didn’t want to use a bottle, she suggested vaguely that I use a cup.

We bought our first formula: Babynat, an organic French product that smelled faintly of vanilla. We offered him little sips from a cup. To our surprise he took it. My confidence in breastfeeding had evaporated.

Every three hours Tolly and I went through torture. It seemed illogical to place my super-sensitive nipples in those agonising jaws. I tried to remember what I had done last time. I rang NCT breastfeeding counsellors, midwives and anyone else I could think of. They wittered on about positioning. I tried to take their advice, but no one could suggest anything for a baby who seemed unwilling to suck the breast.

Against established breastfeeding dogma, I bought him a dummy. This comforted him but then I worried that he might suffer from nipple confusion. So I took it away, and let him suck my finger. I tried nipple shields, I tried expressing (painful), I tried feeding him with his legs tucked backwards under my arm (more successful).

Eventually, I looked through various bits of paper left by the midwife and found the number for a breastfeeding counsellor at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital where he had been born. I telephoned, my voice trembling with misery. She asked me how much formula he was taking. I told her 100mls every three hours. ‘You’re not breastfeeding, you’re bottle-feeding’ she said, robustly. I burst into tears. She softened and asked me to come straight in, advising me kindly not to drive in the state I was in. My husband came home and took us both back to hospital, where Tolly was weighed. He had lost another 100g.

Victoria Dubartney, the breastfeeding champion of Queen Charlotte’s, took my breast in one capable hand and shoved it into Tolly’s mouth. He was so surprised that his eyes opened wide and he obediently sucked for a couple of minutes without jumping off and crying. It hurt, but the pain diminished as he sucked. She reassured me that he was very healthy, gave me the right kind of cup and mixing bottle for his formula top-ups and made me feel happier than I had for days.

We went back the next day, and he had put on 50g. I cried with relief, but he was two weeks old and still 360g below his birth-weight. My nipples showed no signs of healing, but I would let him suck for as long as I could stand it and then give him up to 100ml of formula. The cracks and soreness were so bad that Victoria suggested burn dressing, which just made it feel worse. The advice used to be to expose nipples to the air to heal them, now it is to keep them well-oiled.

His weight began to rise steadily, so we gave him less formula. He regained his birth-weight at three and a half weeks. From weighing well over the average at birth, he was now well below it for his age – and he’s stayed that way ever since. I later learned that babies can quite safely lose up to 10% of their body weight after birth: 400g was only 30g over 10%, so no harm had been done.

It took a month for my nipples to heal completely. On the advice of my sister, a homeopath, I massaged my breasts daily with calendula baby oil, and that did help, particularly when hard hot lumps appeared that indicated blocked ducts. If you don’t free them up, it can turn into mastitis.

When the pain went, Tolly began to latch on better and his weight rose slowly but surely. The relief was incredible. I began to remember that breastfeeding is the easy option. It is well worth fighting through the misery, worry, pain and anguish to climb out into the sunlit uplands of shoving the baby up your jumper whenever he needs a feed.

I had never used a dummy before, but found that it comforted him and kept him calm in his bouncy cradle. It was rejected naturally before he was four months old – he had gained control of his far more reliable and delicious fingers. My advice is to get a tiny dummy before your baby is born, and don’t let them use your nipples for comfort in the first weeks.

If the going gets rough, seek help. Telephone counselling doesn’t work – you need a one-to-one and should demand it from the hospital or the NCT. Believe me, breastfeeding is worth it on so many levels. Health and convenience are top of the list; but little in life beats seeing that small face rise like a moon over the horizon of your breast and break into a smile around the nipple.