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in order to give him some extra nutrition as he was very scrawny, being 22 days early and only about 5 lb at birth. When he discovered how quickly and easily he could get milk from the bottle compared to getting it from me, he was smart enough to decide that was the only way he wanted to be fed. The nursing staff had just begun advising me to consider bottle-feeding him anyway as they knew I needed the easiest feeding option for him - due to our other child needing so much special attention. I was still weighing things us when he made the decision for me.

I still feel sad that I was unable to breastfeed either of my babies. I did provide some milk for our daughter for a while but without her stimulating milk production by sucking it really didn't last for long. My daughter was fed by naso-gastric tube till she was 7 months old due to her inability to suck and swallow adequately and safely. Then she had stomach surgery and has been fed by gastrostomy ever since.

I don't know whether I would have bonded more with my little boy in those first weeks if I had been able to feed him myself. I expect I would have done. However, it certainly didn't affect things with my daughter.

I do remember feeling as if my little boy didn't really like me that much in the first six weeks of his life. He wasn't as cuddly as his sister had been from the start and it seemed like he would either be sleeping or screaming at me.

However, when he started smiling at about six weeks of age, our bond intensified greatly. It was just wonderful to look at my baby and have his face light up with pleasure. At last I felt that he did love his mummy. This was even more wonderful than it would be for the average mum. Our little girl's brain damage had made it extremely difficult for her to smile due to the fact that it involves a lot of facial muscles that she cannot control easily. We have had smiles from her in more recent years - and always we've been able to detect pleasure in her face and her eyes - but smiling is still something she can only manage occasionally - and then her smiles are far more subtle than they would be if she could control all her muscles normally.

My son was never a cuddly baby like my daughter was - and still is (and yes, in many ways she's still our baby at nine years of age). He never molded to my body like she did and he always wriggled and squirmed so much when I tried to cuddle him. It was only when he was older that he would allow me to give him a big cuddle without

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