Jan 05 2009
Stomach Flu
Being sick always sucks, but when you have a child to take care of it sucks even more. In my last blog I posted how I wasn’t feeling well and as I thought I was getting better I was apparently wrong. Today is day five of having the flu and I’ve now lost between 5 and 6 pounds. Not to get to disgusting or too personal but in order to hopefully help others out in the future; I had diarrhea and vomiting. I’m currently with out medical so I looked up these two symptoms on WebMD and WOW did that help a lot. For anyone who gets this horrible bug, stay away from high fat foods, greasy foods, spicy foods, and dairy. Don’t jump into any of these foods either; try and gradually eat foods, work up to different things and EAT SLOWLY. I went over twenty four hours with out vomiting and ate some taco’s because I was STARVING and I was sick five hours later.
My husband went out yesterday and bought me some Gatorade, bread, bananas, applesauce and big sticks. Okay the big sticks were no where on WebMD, just something I wanted. 
I started out with a piece of bread that I toasted but left dry and I ate it very slowly and sipped some Gatorade; this made me feel better instantly. I’m convinced it was psychological but it still made me feel better and that is what is important. ha ha Today I’m on my second bottle of Gatorade (one yesterday and one today) and I already have so much more energy than I’ve had. But I can’t say it enough, don’t push yourself too quickly, eat slowly and drink lots of fluids! I tried to drink a ton of water but it upset my stomach so I had to sip it slower than the Gatorade.
Here is the WebMD site that I used to help guide me through my sick times. Gastreonteritis in Adults and Older Children
I got to this page by typing in WebMD “What to eat when you have diarrhea” and this was one of the first links it gave me. After reading through the page and it said “stomach flu” than I knew to keep reading. 
My biggest fear while I was sick was that I would lose my milk supply. I knew it was okay to nurse as long as I didn’t have food poisoning, which I knew I didn’t have because food poisoning wouldn’t let me keep anything down for any amount of time. (Also I hadn’t eaten anything to cause food poisoning, and no one else was sick.) I nursed just like normal which is at night and to put her down for naps and I forced myself to sip on water as often as possible. I thought you had to eat between 1800-2200 calories in order to keep up your supply so I’m not sure how much she’s been getting but I know that I still am producing. Which is great! I have a personal goal to make breastfeeding until at the very least, one year. Once I am able to eat better I’m going to try some oatmeal to bring my supply back up. (Did you know oatmeal will do that? I had one bowl of oatmeal months ago and I could tell my supply increased for at least three days before balancing back out.)
Sorry if any of this doesn’t make sense, I’ve proofread and spell checked but I still haven’t eaten much.
