Just wanted to share this. DS (14mo) has recently been in hospital with a strain of meningitis (now fully recovered thankfully ).
It's my view (and I know it's just personal experience) that bfing has made a huge difference to stopping him being really ill and making it easier for him. We were down to just bfing morning/night as I've been back at work a few months however when he started to get sick he couldn't keep anything down other than bm and wouldn't eat any solids so I started bfing him every couple of hours again. As he could keep the bm down for longer than anything else he didn't get dehydrated.
Although his immune system was really struggling (platelet count down really low) with the disease he didn't get as bad as the doctors expected and recovered much quicker which I can only put down to him having antibodies from me.
Also and pretty amazingly bfing seemed to act as pain relief. When the doctors tried to take bloods from him/put a line in for the iv antibiotics he screamed horrendously and got really distressed so the next time they did it I tried bfing him while they put the needle in and he didn't even notice it going in and stayed still and calm which was amazing.
In a situation where I felt pretty helpless (and really scared) it was great to feel that I could do something . I know he was really lucky to not be worse with it and of course bf can't solve all problems but I like to think it helped