I managed to breastfeed Little Q until she was just over 1 year old. We only stopped due to her getting chicken pox and her poor little mouth completely ulcerated and she could barely sip water let alone latch on and it just felt like the time had come to stop as it was a week before we could have restarted and she never asked for it once she had recovered.
It was a challenging start to our breastfeeding story with Little Q. Her latch was frankly rubbish and she destroyed my right nipple almost instantly which led to me having the scare of my life when she started vomiting bloody milk only to realise it was coming from me as my nipple had cracked that badly. A few weeks of nipple shields and a lot of support from our local breastfeeding groups and the latch was improved, the nipple healed and we slowly weaned her off the shields and got ourselves really comfortable and she happily fed away for a year.
This time around I was determined NOT to go through that again and so was on the latch from the start having learnt a lot last time! Poor little S got so frustrated at times as I just wouldn't let her on unless it was right. I had a wobble as for the first 24 hours she just wouldn't suck! She'd latch on with a fierce determination and then just lie there waiting for it to happen. We popped back to the hospital on day 2 as she was going yellow (eek - jaundice!) and hadn't wee'd yet and I was getting really worried.
The midwife couldn't get her to suck either and we were sent home with syringes so I could hand express and then squirt it into her mouth to get milk into her. We got home, Little S woke up wanting food so I latched her on and she just started sucking - I didn't know whether to laugh or cry after all that! She spent the next 24 hours making up for lost time just in time for my milk to come in.
Once she started sucking it's been plain sailing really. she started piling on the weight again, the jaundice disappeared almost over night and she's just going from strength to strength.
I've now started expressing milk and my husband is giving her one bottle a day so we have the freedom to feed her without me - Little Q just would not take a bottle and it did restrict / cause issues a few times (for example when I had to go to a hospital appointment and she wasn't allowed there) which was stress I'd like to avoid this time around.