A Tough Week All Round

Oscar, Neil and I have had a challenging few days. We ventured out for a celebratory birthday meal for Neil last Sunday lunchtime, and were feeling pretty elated that we managed to eat three courses (with a knife and fork and everything), have a grown up conversation and get home in time to feed Oscar. Our elation was shortlived, however, when I started to feel ill that evening. I've been suffering with the usual symptoms of food poisoning ever since and have been able to keep down only the plainest of food.
As I'm sure most breastfeeding mums will confirm, whenever something interferes with the food you're able to get through your body it sends you into fits of anxiety about how much nutrition is reaching the baby. I have been particularly on edge this week as Oscar was weighed at my GP's on Monday at his eight-week check (another story) and he has fallen quite a long way off his expected growth curve. So this week I've begun a new odyssey - researching the effects that illness and nutrition has on breastfeeding, and trying to work out which of the predicatably contradicting information I trust and believe. Do I listen to health visitor A, who tells me I need to be gorging myself on cream, butter and eggs in order to satisfy my baby's needs, or breastfeeding counsellor B, who points out that women still manage to breastfeed in famine conditions, and a good supply of complex carbohydrates will suffice? I tend to come down on the side of the latter, which is lucky given the fact that anything with butter and cream in it at the moment will stay around about as long as a hoodie that's just spotted the guy from the Child Support Agency.
As an insurance policy when I was ill we gave Oscar a 'top up' of formula milk after his usual breastfeeds. I was upset at the thought of my little baby drinking anything that wasn't coming from me (the formula is made from cows milk, and last time I looked, Oscar was not in the least bit bovine). But needs must, and as Neil sensibly pointed out, in the real World you have to sometimes make compromises (as I discovered when my 'home birth under the Christmas tree' turned into a 'hospital birth attached to beeping things'). Judging by the fact that Oscar seems to have developed a double chin this week, he's not suffered too much from the effects of this week's less-than-ideal events.