Should baby drink Coke or go thirsty?

[FoundDoveInaSoaplessPlace]

We are travelling in SE Asia with a baby and toddler.
Yesterday our planned journey of a 2 hour drive and 30 minute ferry took a total of nine hours. Because of the road delays ( road works and further on a bad accident) we missed the ferry and had to get into a small local boat.
It was hot and humid all day but we got through it ok until the final leg on the boat. Our 12 mo baby got very thirsty and the only drink left was a new bottle of Diet Coke. Baby got extremely agitated and our friend poured some into her bottle as I was holding onto our toddler.

DH who was holding her refused to give it to her and said she would have to wait for clean water. She screamed for 15 minutes until she wore herself out and fell asleep. It was dark and the sea was choppy so I couldn't stand up to give it to her.

DH is extremely anti sugar but AIBU to think that he could have put his principles aside on this one occasion?

now if you were breastfeeding, you wouldn't have had any issue at all.
if you knew you were going to travel with your child then why didn't you breastfeed to make sure this situation never arose?

Was there no cilit bang at hand?

Keyser I think that you'd actually have to risk 13%+. You'd need to scribble an SOS message and pop it into the empty bottle to see it float off in the hope of a handy sailor finding it and coming to your rescue.
Thays why its always important to have a pencil and paper with you when on a small boat.

I don't believe you

Another thing you let her go to sleep, how did you know she was asleep and not unconscious with dehydration?

He's anti sugar but wants to take a bay round SE Asia? Weird decision. When we lived in Africa sometimes Coke was the only safe option.

I know it's usually the men who do it but I suggest while you are in Asia you look for a new DH.

I can't imagine being with someone whose word was final like that. Especially when it's about a baby. Please try to trust your instinct. My brother would be very different if my hippy parents hadn't refused medication as a newborn. For 35 years he hasn't seen, heard spoken or expeienced anything. He's still epileptic as well but nobody cares about his medication now. A bit of sugar or caffeine isn't an issue for a sane normal person. Men who have such ardent opinions about their children's diet or play etc make me feel scared and creepy.

I'd have given her the coke, definitely. Of course, No one is going to say. "Giving a a baby coke to drink is ideal, but it's a lot more ideal than letting a child go thirsty. Yiu must know you're self. There's nothing worse than that. Plus I don't want to scare you but dehydration can kill. Lsck of fluids is more dangerous than lsck of food
You must pass shops on your travels. Can you not pop in and stock up on water and diluted juice, if she doesn't like plain water.
Just add a little dash in to colour the water.

I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so foolish.

Would have given her a bit . At 1 year they can eat a normal diet. The sugar wouldn't worry me as much the other chemicals and it was sugar free so lots of sweeteners. But if the choice is dehydration or a swig of diet coke ..... obvious really.

In olden days children and adults would drink beer rather than water as the alcohol was a safer, cleaner option. Dehydration kills!!

Bertrand - school aged child in dry suit and BA on calm day. Presumably not in SE Asia .

Although I might put you on the naughty step until you get that child's hair cut

If you're marooned at sea you can also drink your wee [Bear Grylls emoticon]

Give her the coke ffs (and get organised). Dehydration does more damage than a bit of sweetener and caffeine. Seriously, some people are not safe to have kids.

You DP sounds lovely.
It's not crack you know.

I am loving the idea that Internet access is freely available but water isn't - welcome to our brave new world.

Of course if the OP was somewhere remote she could probably access neither water of the Internet - but the thought amused me.

I hold the baby is OK OP.

There's a fair few posters on here who have mentioned how toxic, nasty or harmful the dreaded aspartame is. But it's one of the most extensively tested products EVER and there hasn't ever been any proof of this.
Of course, there are plenty of websites that will tell you just how poisonous it is, but none of them are evidence based.

A thread the other night had people (rightly IMHO) ridiculing anti vaxxers, but I reckon some of those same posters think Diet Coke is devils water but often are quite clueless about the hundreds of other products that also contain aspartame

I think I'm losing the plot. I'd swear up and down that I read this thread in the early hours with different replies, except there aren't any deletions at the beginning and I can't find a duplicate.
I didn't imagine it...op correct word for word. Odd.

There were duplicate threads earlier today