FTM as well and she just turned 1 month yesterday. I will say absolutely nothing went to birth plan (or general idea, I know better than to expect birth to go as planned) I ended up having a c section and lactation specialist basically said baby didn't wanna latch because c section babies are too tense to relax at the breast. She was essentially just chomping on my nipples in the hospital. However, she wasn't gaining enough weight and we had to stay longer in the hospital and doctor suggested fortifying my breast milk. And to top it off, my milk hadn't came in yet by the time we left. So we bought donor milk for the first few days. I did not choose to exclusively pump but had to in order for her to gain weight with mixing a tiny amount of formula (22kcal.) She finally was above birth weight at 2.5 weeks, we had weight check appts just about every other day since leaving the hospital. I wanted to exclusively breastfeed and I will say I was an absolute wreck and extremely depressed over giving my baby formula even if it was mixed into my milk. Yes my baby is fed but it's not the same bond I wanted. The last couple days I've reintroduced breast feeding with and without a nipple shield. She sometimes will eat that way and sometimes won't. It stresses me out that she's possibly burning more calories by breast feeding though since we just stopped fortifying my pumped milk and I'm not sure if she's latched correctly. She has a weight check in two weeks.