Birth, Babies and Bacterias
There’s a question that comes back again and again, and that is, how does it fit that babies born a certain way have different health profiles?
Something has been known for a long time, that babies born by C-section have a higher propensity for lung problems and asthma. What scientists are discovering is very interesting. They have been observing these differences for a long time, but now actual studies are showing the impact of different birth methods. A study, just published in the prestigious journal Nature, shows that the microbiome of the baby is seeded during the birth process as the baby travels through the birth canal. Then beyond that, nursing the baby and having a lot of contact with Mom’s skin is going to further seed and diversify those bacterias that generally live in the gut enabling us to adapt to our environment as an integral part of our digestive system and integral part of our immune system.
So it’s very important to realize that if a natural birth is an option as opposed to a C-section, a natural birth has great long lasting benefit for the health of the infant. If you have no choice but to take on to have a C-section, then there are options like vaginal swabbing that are going to be beneficial for the baby. And as always, nursing is going to be the most important thing, an absolute must.
Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1560-1