Don't eat for 2, your pregnancy microbes do it for you!

When I started this blog last year, common belief was that as long as babies are in the womb, they are free of germs (early post on MBAI), but this is now shifting to the understanding that babies are being colonized prior to their birth. But how are they? And what does mum do about it?

 In that earlier MBAI post, I also wrote that a mum's microbiota changes during pregnancy to prepare for baby's birth and colonization. Today, I'm exploring this in more detail:

A 2012 study showed that the microbiota of a 1st trimester pregnant woman was different than the microbiota of a 3rd trimester pregnant woman and it had a profound impact on the woman's metabolism.

By transferring their respective human poo into germ-free bubble mice, they observed that the mice acquiring the poop from heavily-pregnant women became obese, insulin-resistant, and had a greater inflammatory response than lean mice that received poop from newly-pregnant women.
Extraordinary!
But why?
Those changes that include enhanced absorption of sugar and fat from food, and stimulation of the immune system are all in place to ensure a healthy fetal development.

Extracting more calories from food is a feature of bacterial strains that may live predominantly in overweight and obese people - read MBAI 'Is calorie counting over?'

The study also showed that this special pregnancy microbiota was not back to normal straight after birth as they tested it one month postpartum, which is interesting and makes me wonder if there are studies that show if it ever comes back to normal...(and that would explain a lot to a lot of mums...)

Did you put a lot of weight on during pregnancy?

See you next Monday,

The vaginal swab technique for C-section babies

Although it may sound really gross, this is a revolutionising yet simple technique that has been devised to help C-section babies get the best microbial starter pack from their mums (find out what this pack is here).

Indeed, while C-section is an essential tool for mothers and babies for who natural birth may put them at risk, those little bundles of joy are missing some vital ingredients they would have encountered on a natural way out: mum's vaginal microbes.

However, in many countries, it is possible to simply choose when to have your baby. It may seem the next logical step in our 'civilised' and sterile way of living but what about those friendly microbes? More and more scientists are realising that these first microbes baby encounters on his way out determine the level of risk of developing many diseases (coming soon).

When the wife of one of those experts in microbiota gave birth by emergency C-section, he didn't take any chance and applied the vaginal swab technique to his own baby. I recently read that one year on, their baby was very healthy and had not shown any of the signs C-section babies are most at risk such as allergies and eczema.

How to do a vaginal swab?

From Dominguez-Bello et al, 2016.*

The technique consists in keeping a sterile wipe inside the mum's vagina up until the last minute. When baby is out through mummy's tummy, the wipe is applied on baby's mouth, face, and then the rest of his body as if he had been pushed out through mum's vagina with maximum contact in the mouth, then face, then body.

A super recent study* examined how efficient this technique is. Their results showed that gut, oral, and skin bacterial communities of these swabbed newborns were enriched in vaginal bacteria during the first 30 days of life, similar to vaginal birth babies' and, most importantly, completely different from unswabbed C-section babies' - thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the technique.

Would you ask for a vaginal swab if your baby needs to be born by C-section?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section, I'd love to read them.

*The study I'm referring to is: Dominguez-Bello MG, et al. Nat Med 2016; doi:10.1038/nm.4039. 

Is water birth bad for baby's microbiota?

Ever since I read my first book on microbiota, I've been wondering if a baby born in a water birth pool still gets his mummy's best microbial starter pack!

Previous articles here on MBAI have covered how important it is for babies to be colonized by mum's vaginal and rectal microbes on their way out of their cozy womb where they were virtually germ-free (although this is now debatable). This early bug population is indeed essential in immunity development as well as a digestive help. And knowing that a lot of research data shows the link between increased disease risk and C-section due to baby being colonized by skin rather than vaginal bugs, I started to wonder about water birth!

Water birth (photo borrowed from here)

So, what happens when babies are born in a 'wet' environment? Here are the natural questions one could ask oneself:

• How is the water treated? Does it kill or affect in any way mum's vaginal and rectal environments?
• How is the pool treated? If it's a mild treatment to avoid the above, is it strong anti-microbial to kill off previous mums' inhabitants (pathogenic or not)?
• When baby travels the birth canal, does he meet enough of mum's essential microbes to be colonized, or are they diluted?
• When baby is taken out of the pool, is he patted dry more vigorously, cleaning off his microbes?

I don't know the definite answers to these questions. I couldn't find any scientific articles on the outcome but I found that:
- In terms of anti-microbial treatment, off-gas chlorine is usually used and can then be eliminated by adding Vitamin C powder to the water. Filtered water is also used as well as ozonated water!
- Baby's vernix is also thick enough not to be affected by any treatment!
- We can imagine that as baby passes through the birth canal, he will have swallowed copious amount of microbes already and will be colonized as if he had been born on 'dry' grounds!

I could however find a couple of blog posts asking the same question but speculating that yes water birth does have a negative influence on baby's microbiota.
(Note: It was also suggested that water pool should be used during labour only to ease the pain but to give birth on 'dry' grounds so the issues raised above are not too much of a worry!)

Needless to say, following each of these articles (here and here) were comments of diverse opinions:

A gastroenterology-focused naturopath and nutrigenomic specialist 'wrote' that she herself analyzed the microbiota of many infants and that there was no difference between babies born on 'dry' land and babies born in water pool. Many midwives also refuted the claim.

Have you given birth to your child in a water pool? Or at home?

If you'd like to share your thoughts or stories, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment, I'd love to read them.

See you next Monday!

Our babies' first invaders

When a baby is still in his mummy’s tummy, his gut is free of germs (although this is now a debatable matter). As soon as he is born - the natural way or by C-section - baby will encounter millions of germs that will be the firsts to colonize this brand new body.

As we are learning now, the type of microbes that first set foot in our baby’s gut will determine a multitude of factors with long-term consequences.

If we think about the way a baby is born naturally, the first microbes he will encounter will be those of his mum’s vagina and poo. You may think how gross it is that baby’s head first contact is with poo but rest assured it is all in the Plan:



When you look at a mum-to-be’s microbiota, changes in her gut flora already occurred during her pregnancy: what happens is that Mum is preparing to offer her future baby with the best and most useful microbial starter pack with which he can establish his own colonies. This process of microbial shifts even includes mum's gut microbiota ending up in her vagina for a swift delivery to baby when he’s out through the birth canal.

Mum-to-be’s microbiota is changing during pregnancy to provide baby with the best microbial start - Do you want to tweet this?

When baby is ready and contractions finally start, mum’s gut and vagina are travelling 'down' to populate the birth canal with a specific collection of germs that is specifically designed for baby, e.g. lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Prevotella are specialists in educating a baby’s digestive system and immunity:

They will become the first armed police of the gut - thanks to the natural antibiotics they produce - and will fight off other invaders that might not have been invited such as Streptoccocus, Pseudomonas, C difficile – all nasties for such a young and delicate age.

These lactic acid bacteria are also perfect because they help baby digest milk by converting the milk sugar lactose into lactic acid, creating energy. Most of this lactose will have been digested by our small intestine beforehand but the leftovers that are passed on to our large intestine will be taken care of by gut bacteria.

As baby develops, he will acquire more diverse germs as his own diet diversified.
It stands to wonder then, what happens to babies in the Western world who are born by C-section (available soon)?

Although in some cases it is in mum’s and baby’s best interest to adopt these modern techniques, we may wonder soon if some countries where being born by C-section is the norm don’t overdo it at the unbeknownst detrimental effect on our babies...

Do you think modern societies are too sterile

when it comes to baby birth? 

Would you like to share your thoughts? Please leave me a comment, I’d love to read them.

All this amazing information was found in this scientific review: Belkaid Y, and Hand TW. Cell 2014; 157: 121-41.