BF after swim in the channel

[Meemaid]

We had a lovely day out at the beach today and I had a lovely swim (English channel).

I meant to wash my nipples off after with shower gel and bottled water and just completely forgot and nursed my 8 month old.

I'm now freaking out about bacteria/sand/too much salt.

Argh my anxiety hadn't been triggered for a while :(. I thought I'd ask here how bad you think it is before I go down the Google rabbit hole.

I assume you refer to anxiety as you are diagnosed and having therapy and maybe even medication if you have this level of unnecessary worry? It'll be totally fine. What on earth.

It will be completely fine

File this under 'things that really do not matter' and move on.

Agree there is zero to worry about. The only time I might be cautious about this would be if baby is tiny, eg 2 weeks old! They’ve got to grow up in the world, germs & all…
a bit of sea water is absolutely nothing to worry about! X

Regarding bacteria - if there was anything harmful in the sea, you'd have almost certainly ingested a bit yourself and will be busy making antibodies for it which your baby will get in your milk.

Regarding salt - minimal. If there was that much salt on your nipple, baby would have fussed because it didn't taste nice.

Sand - wait until baby is a bit bigger. They eat sand given half the chance! It goes straight through them, no problems.

Thank you so much all, I will not give it another thought.

@mrsfoof thank you, so helpful to list it rationally.

I have had CBT which really helped but occasionally get triggered and need to go through the process again.

I'd sort of quickly googled it before out of interest and saw it was even fine for babies to go in the sea themselves from 6 months so thought it was fine but then realised it may depend on the sea and that the English channel probably isn't the cleanest.

Then I had a shower and the water on my face tasted so salty I worried she'd have ingested too much for her kidneys to handle. Oh dear! I realise I am being stupid now.

I read the title as "BF after swimming the Channel"

That baby is going to have a great immune system then.

I BF for 6 years ( different babies ) and never washed my nipples before a feed and none of my babies every got sick.

As a PP said, you body makes antibodies to any bugs and when you Bf they are passed on to baby . Its a very clever system.