Diarolyte / re-hydration sachets - does a bf baby *need* these?

[ReverseThePolarity]

As the subject really. I have been told various things by various people! Ds has d&v bug for a few days and has been almost exclusively bf - seemed to be on the mend but just done massive diahorrea x 2 - taking him the Dr and given that everyone else I know whose baby has had this bug has been given diarolyte I want to know:

1. Does a bf baby need rehydration sachets?
2. If "no" will it actually do him any harm to take them (he is nearly 12 mo)?
3. Is there anything else I should be doing (please do not say go to hospital - have already been there as I thought this vomiting was related to a fall and was given dreadful advice re: bf & bugs - it wasn't related to fall apparently so we were sent home)?

TIA

Its just 2 replace fluids and salt that losing threw diahorrea and sickness. It may help, i dont believe it will do any harm as long as correct dose given. Is your baby feeding well, i cant see that it would be any different for a bottle fed baby, as they would still need fluid replacement etc..
Hope someone else knows more about it

is he still having wet nappies? Is the pee a normal colour and not dark yellow? is he Bf a lot? How does the baby seem in himself - is he sleeping, active, lethargic????

i am not a dr just a mum of bf toddlers. i have never given my kids them but would if i thought they were dehydrated. whether they woudl take them in prefernace to yummy Bm is another matter.......

Oh RTP
POOR babyRTP. I hope he gets on the mend soon. You must have been so worried when you thought it was a fall causing it.

I don't have anything useful to say apart from making a doctor justify what a sachet contains that would make it superior to bm, with its perfect balance for rehydration, AND the antibodies.
Sachets are basically sugars and salts, so I can't see why they'd be more useful than bm.

Babycarrot was a bit off a week ago, and vomited for the first time ever. The only thing she kept down was bm, and so I took a couple of doses of moremilkplus (yuk) to see if I could rapidly boost my supply for a while. It actually had me leaking for the first time in months, so it might be worth doing that if you have any galactogogues in the house.

I doubt the sachets will do any harm. If you want to get more fluids and / or it's easier to get them into him this way, then I'd feel OK with it I suppose, but only if I was struggling to get BM inside him.

Otherwise, calpol for the temp, skin to skin if you can. Are you home with him?

Thanks all, he is not himself at all - in fact someone remarked the other day "isn't he good?" (I hate that phrase) so I knew he wasn't right!!

He is feeding well, in fact he has been feeding constantly.

He keeps some feeds down, and doesn't keep other feeds down. The poo is awful. At first I thought it was just because he's been exclusively bf again for the first time in a while but I gave him some toast last night and he kept it down but still the poo is runny and explosive.

VLC I lold at "any galactogogues in the house". I have goats' rue, fenugreek, oats (are they a galactogogue or just a "lactogenic food"?), fennel and blessed thistle. Haven't taken any for months and months when I realised babypolarity was just small and my milk was just fine.

Good idea though.

I'm never having him weighed ever again though, imagine how much weight has dropped off his already pixie-like frame with this bug.

feeding constantly = good although a pain for you

lethargic =

Yes, it is all a bit really especially as I think he probably picked up the bug in hospital (where we took him after his fall, which was entirely my fault for not locking the baby gate properly) in the first place.

Poor wee man.

I think babies can get quite ill without all the corect salts etc. If you are worried that your babe is in any way dehydrated (no wet nappies, dark pee, lethargic, etc, all pointed out above), then I think dioralyte will help bring him back to a level where bf will be all he needs. If he/she is peeing fine, or enough, and isn't lethargic, sleepy etc, then you're fine. I wouldn't knock the dioralyte, it's not trying t replace the breast milk, it's doing a different job, iyswim....

I personally have never understood how you get a baby to actually drink any of that dioralite stuff. On the rare occasion ds had a tummy bug I did try and get him to take some but as he never really liked bottles and rarely drank more than 1/2 0z of liquid from then I couldn't work out how to get him to actually drink it. It tastes pretty vile even if you mix it with juice or something.

I just used to breastfeed on demand and was always very grateful that I could at least get him to take breastmilk as a liquid.

the dioralyte is really HORRID! Will he even take them? have you tried?

AFAIW it wont do any harm even if he is not dehyrdated. i woudl be worried if he was lethargic all teh time

please try not to feel too bad about the fall . assuming he feel downstairs and not out a window . babies & toddlers do fall and he will do it many times in teh future

I had to take ds to a&e a few weeks ago because he got dehydrated with d&v bug.... vommed everything up for a few days, then pooped it all out after that, no wet nappy for 2 days, started to get lethargic etc. Had to give him dioralyte in his mouth w syringe, little by little. He wasn't drinking anything by bottle or sippy cup, but did take it by syringe. Got him rehydrated that way and eventually got him back on track.
I was told to try and get 10ml down him every 10 minutes. Wierdly, ds seemed to like it (blackcurrant flavour!)...

I will try him with it, as long as it is doing a different job to bm and not replacing it iyswim (which is what they told me to do in hospital - stop bf and give dioralyte - so glad I am not there any more it was horrid).

He will take most fluids from a cup, so I will try him, maybe put a bit of apple juice in it or something.

my dd got this when she had gastroenteritis and it was really good. you get blackcurrant or orange flavour or u can just add it to juice. dd quite liked the blackcurrant. just have plenty nappies to hand as it makes them pee a lot. when he is havng a lot of wet nappies id cut it back again

I managed to get my DD to take the flavourless dioralyte using one of those syringes you get with child neurofen whyen she was a baby.
Hope your baby feels better soonx

Soory missed your post there orangina! What you said!

Here's a joke for you.

Me: Doctor, doctor, my baby feels sick. Should I continue to breastfeed whilst giving him these rehydration sachets you've given me?
Doctor: No.

I don't know why I was surprised. When I said to MIL who was at the doctors that the doctor was wrong ... get this, she accused me of being "like one of those religions that refuse blood transfusions because of their beliefs". Seriously.

Luckily... it said on the packet of the stuff prescribed by the Doctor... to stop all fluids/feeds except breastfeeding! Mil at least apologised to her credit.

Why am I surprised? I think I'm just a bit more upset that mil - oh, and dh - think I should leave it alone, ds is on the mend now, no harm done.

I however don't think I'm being unreasonable to be a bit upset about the wrong advice being given.

Ho hum.

DD had to go to hospital because she was so dehydrated from D&V about 10 days ago. She had previously been able to keep BM down but when she hadn't been able to keep that down or even sips of water for over 12 hours we took her to the GP. By this point she was very lethargic and floppy. We were sent straight up to the hospital and they gave us dioralyte to give to her. She managed to keep this down when she couldn't keep the BM down. She loved the dioralyte so please don't assume that your DS won't. The hospital advised that she needed to have the sachets to rehydrate but I could still BF her if she wanted it (she did want some BM but not as much as she wanted the dioralyte). The change in her after she had managed just 50ml of dioralyte was incredible. Once she was rehydrated and able to keep other fluids down we were advised that she didn't need the dioralyte and that BM was good for her as long as we were both comfortable with the constant feeding.

It won't do your DS any harm to have it. I personally think that it might be worth a try although if he is keeping other food/fluids down then he doesn't desperately need the dioralyte. If he deteriorates then he definitely needs the dioralyte as an electrolyte imbalance can be extremely serious very quickly in little ones.

It may help you to know that the doctor explained that dioralyte is so easy for them to absorb because of how it is balanced and this is what makes it difficult for the baby to bring it back up.

when my 11 month old had them he wouldn't drink them. They said to add squash and he wouldn't drink that either. He threw up every other b feed and didn't eat more than a couple of biscuits for 5 or so days. He drank some plain water too.