Hi I'm onto my 3rd week of having a head cold. It started to go last week and then I got sinusitis and another horrible cold developed   Fergus was unwell for about a week and is grand now (and so's Jim!) I was chatting to a friend last night who breastfed her little girl for a year and she said she was quite unwell a few times although her little girl was fine and we were both wondering whether breastfeeding comprises the immune system in the mum. It would make sense that all the goodness is going to the baby and by no means do I want to stop but I just wondered if any other BF's had found that? I do eat a healthy diet but have bought some supplements to try and boost my immune system (breastfeeding specific ones). Also I think that stopping eating Garlic (due to concerns over whether it was upsetting LO's tummy) is maybe to blame as we used to eat tons of garlic and I hadnt had a cold in well over a year.
Anyway would be good to hear other peoples experiences.
Aly x

It wouldn't make sense for your body to reduce your capabilities for fighting infection as you would be incapable of looking after your baby if that happened - nature doesn't work that way as it would mean that in the wild, mum was at risk of dying more and therefore bubs would die as well - thus losing both bits of the gene pool. It doesn't make sense biologically for something which is so necessary to the survival of the species to have such a detrimental effect on the body's defences.

My theory would be the same as Sally's; that the reason your immune system will be struggling with things is because you are a mum! we have no choice but to run on less sleep than our body needs, get less rest generally and to push ourselves harder than our ME would like us to do so, and all of that generally means a reduced ability to fight things off.

It could also be possible that the reason your LO fought it off so well is because of the breastfeeding, and that your dh fought it off as he may well be stronger generally with his immune system, or he may have been exposed to that strain of the bug before which meant he already had the antibodies to fight it with.

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with the breastfeeding, I think it is more to do with the fact that your body is run down in general from having a young baby and ME.

Hi,
Something I've found to be true particularly since Alex started nursery is that I get a lot more bugs and it's due to him bringing them home from nursery, but they either don't make him ill or he's only very sligtly ill but they hit adults harder!  I was wondering about this and then my Dad told me about his friends who were ill after having the seemingly healthy grandchildren to stay and the nurse told them that this is what happens- children bring bugs home from playgroup/nursery etc, don't succumb to them themselves but pass them on to adults and that's how these bugs survive!  

Hope you're feeling a lot better soon
Hugs
Lynne xx