NHS Direct response re giving cooled boiled water to bfed baby with stomach upset - any comments?

[hunkermunker]

"Thank you for your recent comments regarding our advice about
breastfeeding. I have looked at our breastfeeding and bottle feeding
health encyclopaedia topics that were recently comprehensively reviewed
and was unable to find any mention of giving exclusively breastfed babies
cooled, boiled water when they are unwell. However, following your
comments I have checked with one of our clinicians regarding this matter
who has informed me that NHS Direct never advises breastfeeding mothers to
stop breastfeeding, but that if a baby has diarrhoea and vomiting, the
advice would be to continue with normal feeds, plus give additional cooled
boiled water between feeds.
Editorial team, NHS Direct New Media"

Good work, hunker!

Is it still wise to give an exclusively bf baby supplemental cooled, boiled water if they have a tummy upset?

I never encountered that situation, thankfully, as mine didn't get tummy upsets until they were well past a year old.

But surely a mother's milk is enough even when they're ill?

Hunker, good job, but get back to them and ask why on earth they would advise water for a sick bf baby between feeds - very poor advice.

It is not necessary, and actually runs the risk of intro'ing new pathogens into the baby. Filling the baby up with water will replace the breastmilk the baby needs to recover.

Ask them to check again and to get back to you.

Any bf expert would confirm what I have said - it is not controversial at all.

Yes, we had an absolute fiasco with DD when she was about 6 months old and had very bad diarrhoea for several days. Our (utterly witless) local GP told us to give her only cooled boiled water with Dioralyte for a 24 hour period. We all managed about 12 hours before all getting too distressed by DD being so hungry that we phoned the emergency out of hours GP and NHS Direct. Both of them said something along the lines of "What the fuck??? That advice is outdated and wrong. You should never 'starve' an infant at that age. Are you sure he said that? etc etc" Advice they gave us was the advice above. We were all much happier.

I will get back to them, Tiktok. I hoped you'd see this - I knew it was duff info.

If the people who are providing the advice can't get it right...

I reckon it's because they are treating breastmilk like formula - "between feeds" being the clue - if you have a breastfed baby who needs something between when they would normally feed, that something can easily be breastmilk.

Thanks, all.

My reply:

Thank you for your response.

I really think that the advice to give cooled, boiled water between feeds is duff though - you risk introducing pathogens to the baby and filling them up with water when they need breastmilk to recover.

There's no problem to simply breastfeed the baby more frequently - the "between feeds" advice is more appropriate for a baby being given formula. There's no "between feeds" often for a poorly breastfed baby!

I would be interested to hear the rationale behind giving an exclusively breastfed baby water at all - when this isn't what the NCT, LLL, BFN or ABM or the National Breastfeeding Helpline would recommend.

I look forward to hearing your response.

whenever i've phoned NHS Direct about ds having tummy upsets they've always advised me to feed on demand and not give water - just to be alert for dehydration (for the times when he couldn't even hold bm down - i'm sure some of MN remembers that dark time! ) and take him to A&E if i was still worried!

I don't understand why some of the NHS Direct nurses are giving out the boiled water advice and some aren't - surely they're all just reading the stuff off the screen?

It