Illness and breastfeeding

[Newmrs22]

Baby is 9 weeks old and exclusively BF. I currently have a stomach bug and feel like hell- D&V, fever, headache. I'm quite dehydrated and worried about supply already. I'd really like to try one bottle of formula to get some sleep tonight, but I'm worried that will reduce supply further. Is this likely to cause a problem? And if it did, is it recoverable?

Oh dear, I hope you feel better soon. That's tough, with a 9 week old.

One formula feed shouldn't make a difference but you will need to BF tomorrow to keep your supply up. Babies also go through periods of not feeding due to illness, and I have always managed to weather it - missing one feed shouldn't make too much difference as long as you reinstate the feed the next day. You may find you feel uncomfortably full however after missing a feed.

This happened to me at, I missed one feed and managed to feed through it. Best thing to feed through, sit on towel, bowl at ready as you are passing on antibodies. I passed it onto my DH (how thoughtful), but not my Dd. Good luck, keep sipping water!

At 9 weeks I think supply is getting there to bring well established and hopefully not likely to suffer 1 missed feed. As folks said, express as soon as you can to help maintain it and consider hand expressing small abouts if you start to feel engorged - for comfort not necessarily for storing the milk.