It's virtually impossible to do totally exclusive breastfeeding without a supportive partner, as there are days when you literally cannot get off the sofa. Unsupportive partners will mutter, irritated that you don't do anything around the house all day; even supportive but slightly unhelpful ones will worry about your fatigue and emotional well-being, and wonder out loud if perhaps one bottle tonight would matter..?
I breastfed my kids exclusively for the first 4 months primarily to attempt to stave off passing on my asthma (advice at the time, it's now 6 months) but in hindsight, I had a few very lucky breaks. Firstly, the midwife who took the antenatal classes I attended was very pro-breast, but in an informed, 'here's the scientific evidence' sort of way. Having seen studies of how even one bottle can trigger an allergy response gave me the motivation to keep going through the darkest days (whereas the whole Earth Mother 'it's such a primeval connection' thing does nothing for me).
Then I found, almost by luck, a special breastfeeding workshop day in a hospital in the next county, and managed to get a place. The highlight was a talk from a new mother, who brought along her baby and I actually saw someone breastfeeding for the first time ever. (Nowadays, I'd recommend YouTube videos to understand exactly how the baby's lips are positioned - it's not like sucking a milkshake through a straw.)
Then I had a very down-to-earth midwife in the hospital, who helped my son and I enormously with latching difficulties - in the end, she grabbed my breast, grabbed his head, and made the two come together correctly. She did this for several feeds until we 'got' it. It was a bit of a shock at the time, but I'm not sure we would have managed on our own.
Then when my son was around 6 weeks old and freefalling down the weight charts, I left a health clinic session deeply upset and angry at being told that I would have to give him a bottle each day to top him up, and that if he didn't gain X amount of weight by the next time he came he'd be referred to a specialist. I went straight to the maternity unit where I'd taken my classes, found my lovely teaching midwife, who calmed me down with more common sense - 'so let's see... his mouth and lips are moist, he's having plenty of wet nappies, and he's sitting there calmly in his car seat watching us with interest - that is NOT a baby who's starving'. She showed me how the charts in the UK were compiled using weight gain patterns for BOTTLE fed babies, which are completely different. Then she subversively suggested that I simply didn't take him back to that health visitor to be weighed, but brought him to their clinic. Or simply didn't get him weighed.
But overall, I had a very, very supportive husband, who didn't mind that I effectively dropped out of life for a couple of months, who'd done the research alongside me and considered this the only important thing I could be doing at that time, who did a demanding job then came home with take-out dinner and started doing all the housework or taking the baby out for a stroll around the garden 'to give Mummy a little break', who never ONCE put the seeds of doubt into my head that was it really worth all this trouble..? Yet managed to do this whilst still making it clear that it was my choice, and he could see how demanding it was, and he would support me if I wanted to knock it on the head too.
I didn't even have that hard a time of it. No mastitis, no real pain after the first few weeks where you get that toe-curling jolt on latching, no problems about feeding in front of family, nothing but positive messages from passers-by who happened to notice I was discreetly feeding in a corner of a cafe. For me, though, the hardest part was the utter dependency, which was mostly lovely and occasionally desperate torture. (Like in the early days when for several weeks he fed ALL night, then slept from 5am to 10am, then started all over again.) I'd had a 40 hour labour with a blue lights/ sirens transfer from the maternity unit to the county hospital, ending by an emergency c-section, for heavens sake. Where was MY period of recovery and convalescence?!
And then oh, the relief when he was 3-4 months old, and I had his feeding routine down well enough that I managed to skip out of the door to nip to the garden centre 500m away from the house. On my own! For a whole half an hour!
I'm glad I fed my kids completely for their early months, and continued alongside some bottles and solid food. And fingers crossed, at ages 10 and 6 neither shows any signs of asthma as yet. But having done it, I entirely understand why it sometimes doesn't work out. If I'd not been asthmatic, or had been going back to work, or hadn't come across a couple of key midwives at the right time, or had exactly the right support from hubby, then I too would have been one of the 'failures'.
kodokan