Since we’re sharing helpful advice, my favorite reference book was “The Nursing Mother’s Companion” by Kathleen Huggins.
I took a breastfeeding class offered by our birthcenter. Since I had read obsessively up to that point, I didn’t feel that I learned much (although it was nice to hear things reinforced). The real benefit to the class was that it was meant for couples. My husband got an eye opener. (and I didn’t expect him to read nursing books) Now instead of ME saying, “Honest, it’s okay and totally normal that the baby eats for 45 minutes, takes an hour long break, and eats for 45 minutes again,” it was coming from a recognized authority. This gave my husband the confidence he needed to brush off helpful relatives’ comments of, “She’s nursing again?” Or when I was still breastfeeding a 9mo old, “So, she’s *still * breastfeeding?”
Even though daddies don’t breastfeed, their confidence goes a long way toward boosting a new mother’s confidence.
OH good Lord, yes - in fact you need to work at not feeling guilty if it doesn’t work out at all. I was just like overlyverbose : pre-eclampsia, eclampsia and post-eclampsia (which I’d never even heard of), long and fairly unpleasant labour but just like her I’d also been determined that no child of mine would be bottle-fed. I even had to be persuaded that we should buy a couple of bottles to have in the house just in case.
So then Niamh arrives and pretty much any plans I had about anything at all went out of the window. It didn’t help that she was tongue-tied, but even when that was fixed, she just refused to breastfeed. By 6 weeks when I admitted defeat she had actually put her mouth to the breast a grand total of 3 times, all of them when we were in the bath together. Any other time we ever tried she became rigid and hysterical and just would not entertain the idea. A sign of how determined and indepedent she’s been since she was born, I think!
I spent long hours with the lactation consultants at the hospital, or on the phone with support groups and tried so many different things, but nothing at all worked. She’s 18 months old now and at times I still feel like I failed her and that I could have gone on trying, even though rationally I know that she’s doing fine and we did the best we could at the time. We’re trying for number two now, and I’m even more determined to breastfeed if I can, but I guess I’m a bit more realistic about the process now.
And a question: one of the benefits of bottle feeding from the start was that her dad was able to share the load of childcare right from the start - he fed her as often as I did in the early weeks and so they were extremely close from the beginning. Does the obviously exclusively close breastfeeding relationship affect the family dynamic in the very early days- particuarly with the fact that very new babies pretty much eat the whole time they’re awake? What did you all do about that?
(I really hope that I’ve phrased this so as not to offend anyone - I remember how all-consuming my relationship was with my daughter when she was first born, is all).
I hear this a lot, and frankly I never felt like I was carrying more than my fair share of the childcare burden in the early days, even though I was doing all of the feeding. MrWhatsit got up at night to do diaper changes when that was still necessary, and took the baby for walks when he needed settling down, and did (does) all sorts of helpful dad stuff.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are parts of breastfeeding that aren’t always the most fun, but for me, this wasn’t one of them. I constantly see advice to new moms to “pump some milk so Dad can feed a bottle sometimes!” or people saying “when you breastfeed, Dad doesn’t get to bond with the baby during feedings!” and I mean no offense, but that always struck me as being completely ridiculous. There are so many ways to spend time with and hold and bond with a baby besides just holding a bottle while they eat, you know? And anyway, I have sometimes pumped milk and let MrWhatsit do some bottle feedings when I’m going to be out of the house for a while, so it’s not like he’s completely shut out of feeding the baby or anything.
So I guess my answer to the question is that we didn’t really do anything about this issue, because we didn’t consider it an issue to be solved. (Insert shrug smilie here.)
I guess that, since I’ve read the same things (pump so Dad can help with the feeding) I wondered if (a) it was a big deal anyway and (b) if mums had gone as far as pumping when they were actually going to be around, deliberately just so that they could share the leuuuuurve a bit. You make perfect sense, of course.
Ghanima -
Another resource recommendation:
When we were having problems with breastfeeding (specifically, my daughter’s latch), I found Dr Jack Newman’s web site incredibly helpful. Plus they answered my email questions within 24 hours.
Re: pumping.
With my first, I had a job where I was not in an office, but rather out seeing clients all day long. Like Sarahfeena, I got a car adapter and pumped in my car, and kept the milk on icepacks in the cooler part of the pump bag. There were a couple of times where that method failed and I ended up having to dump spoiled milk, but in general, it worked OK. I kept a blanket in my car to cover up. With my second, I was part time in an office where I had to pump in the bathroom, and part time in one where I had to resort to the car. Frankly, I preferred the car.
Really, the most important thing I can say about breastfeeding is this: Please do not refer to breastmilk as “liquid gold” the way that Dr. Sears does. It’s frickin’ annoying. 
There are a few breastfeeding forums I’ve been to where people seem to like to call it “booby juice” or some variant thereof. People, please. Just because you are feeding an infant does not mean you have to talk like one. This makes me irrationally angry and is one of the main reasons (that and shrill dogmatism) I don’t frequent the breastfeeding forums.
If you refer to it as ‘liquid gold’, not only will I need to punch you, but it will hurt much, much more if you ever have to pour the little containers down the sink.
Actually, that always hurts.
Oh, and I was lucky enough to land a snacker- twice an hour for ten minutes for four hour stretches. Another normal, but soreness-inducing, baby type. At four and a half months he’ll now go up to two hours.
I think maybe I’ll invest in some more icre cream. Just to, um, make sure my baby is getting enoughto eat. 
Anyone got a really good remedy for blocked ducts? I’ve had one for two weeks. It hasn’t gotten infected yet, but nurse/pump/compresses isn’t doing anything.
Why are you breastfeeding, and do you save any for the kid?
I don’t have advice for you other than what you are doing. I just kept nursing through them–OWIE! But even as painful as that could be, it was far less painful than the two times my clogged ducts got infected.
As far as my experience with my children taking a bottle–as I mentioned up-thread, I was not successful at pumping with my older son. But I was able to with the younger son. Interestingly enough, he would not take breast milk from me if it was in the bottle. He’d take it from his dad and he would take juice or water from a bottle with me, but NOT milk.
Guess he knew where Bessie the Cow was.