Breastfeeding my 2nd daughter

Breastfeeding is suppose to be this natural,easy thing if you listen to everyone else but as a breastfeeding mom, you know this isn't always the case, at least with my two girls it wasn't. My 1st daughter was born at 36 and 6 and even though healthy as can be would not suck to save her life. At the time, the nurses kept telling me that she would get hungry enough that she would suck hard enough to bring down my milk. She did have some latch issues too but mostly poor suck. Well, when Alissa was 4 days old we went back to the hospital, due to her eyes becoming yellow that morning, just to find out she was also dehydrated. Now, I was up all night the night before trying to get her to nurse and she wanted no part of it and would just go to sleep. Following what I was told I figured she would eat as soon as she was hungry. That day I started pumping and supplementing with formula. That lasted until she was a month old when I was producing not even half of her daily needs so I stopped. Flash forward to my youngest.
 Callie was born almost 9 years after her sister so I knew I had more patience and knowledge about breastfeeding that  I could, and would make it work. WRONG. Callie was born at 37 and 1 and minus the clefts on her neck (did not know about the missing kidney yet) healthy as can be but she would not latch. I tried, nurses tried, and even the lactation consultant tried. We could get her to latch using the SMS system but not alone. Have you ever tried the SMS system? It is hard to work alone! I tried at the hospital and spilled breast milk EVERYWHERE! I gave her a bink at 2 days old (in retrospect maybe I shouldn't had) but I wanted to make sure her suck was good since my oldest wasn't.She had a great suck so not the issue. We stayed in the hospital for three days working on her latching every 2-3 hrs and nothing. She would just not do it unless we here giving her breast milk via a tube at the same time (SMS). I decided that day to pump and not wait any longer. I pumped like crazy with a hospital grade pump every 2 hrs for the 1st 2 weeks. After that I bought my own pump and pumped every 3 until she was 6 weeks, At 6 weeks, I dropped the over night feedings because I was exhausted! So I still pumped every 3 hrs from 6 am to 9 pm, but I got the much needed rest from 9pm to 6am. I am proud to say that my daughter is now almost 9 months old and has only been on expressed breast milk. I plan on stopping at 11 months and hopefully have enough stored to take her to a year old. It has been hard, very hard but she is worth it.