As the birth of her first baby drew near, Suzanne Barston was determined to do everything right – including how she fed him. “I really wanted to breastfeed,” says the writer, who lives near Chicago. “I had gone to all the breastfeeding classes.”

But within a couple of days, it was clear her baby was unable to suck from the breast properly, so she began pumping her breastmilk and giving it from a bottle for every feed.

Doing this took up to several hours a day, leaving her almost no time to look after herself. As the weeks went by, the constant pumping and feeding left her mentally and physically exhausted, contributing to her growing post-natal depression. Her son wasn’t thriving either; he developed a rash and often had blood in his bowel movements. A doctor said he could be allergic to something in her diet that was passing through to the milk and suggested they try a hypoallergenic brand of formula.

Within two days, her son’s symptoms disappeared, and once they stayed with the formula he made a full recovery. It sounds like a happy ending, but looking back, Barston is angry about how much pressure she was put under to breastfeed, when, as she now sees it, “It’s not that big a deal.”

Breastfeeding not a big deal? That sounds like heresy. “Breast is best” is the advice from the World Health Organization, Unicef and countless other respected health bodies, who say babies should be fed exclusively with breastmilk for the first six months of their life because of the health advantages to both children and their mums. It’s thought to be so beneficial that women are now encouraged to keep nursing into toddlerhood and beyond.