Hmm.  It seems ludicrous to me that increased cortisol in the parent would
change the **flavor** of the milk, causing Baby to not feed well.

I did a little poking around and was surprised to see this study that says
"Cortisol level post stress [test] predicted reduced intensity of salt and
sour, suggesting that stress-related changes in adrenocortical activity
were related to reduced taste intensity."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3240721/   [Published in final
edited form as: Psychophysiology. 2012 Jan; 49(1): 96–103.
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=22091733>
]

All of which is to say: high cortisol may impact **the parent's**
taste/smell skills, especially if they are stressed about COVID.  But I'm
willing to bet the Bub is happily snuggled in parent's arms and clueless
about COVID.

If your suggested approaches to increasing direct feeding interest are
already paying off, I'd venture that it wasn't the taste of the milk, and
it wasn't cortisol, but was just one of those head-scratching changes in
baby behaviors.  You don't mention the baby's age, which changes what we
scratch our heads about, but if you can (and if warranted given the baby's
age) this might be worth a weighted-feed follow-up

-- 
Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC, FILCA
Wyndmoor, PA, USA
U. S. Breastfeeding Committee: CRASH, Nominations, Membership, Donor Milk

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