Aside from generating closeness, bonding, safety and heat babies need breastmilk to build an excellant immune system through giving the baby the essential bacteria to start innoculation of the gut microbiome. What is the microbiome? So when we talk about the microbiome we’re essentially talking about the trillions of bacteria, yeast, mold, archaea that are all growing inside your body. Most of them live in the gut but they are in fact spread out throughout your whole entire body, so all of your organs for example your eyes, your lungs to your feet, everything has a microbiome, your skin that covers every surface of your body has its own microbiome. The bacteria in breast milk particularly bifidobacteria helps set up the baby’s immune system and it is wonderful if a mother can solely breastfeed for the first four months of life or at least top partially breastfeed with formula milk. I was very lucky to be breastfed by my mother until I was nine months old. So I got the best start in life. Babies under the age of 1 should not be having formula milk as their main source of food if this is at all possible). Although probiotics are now added to formulas, the bacteria that’s in breast milk cannot be made in a factory and cannot be put in a formula and the bacteria you inherit from your mother is far far more beneficial setting up your immune system than anything you can get out of a tub or capsule. But saying that if you have a baby that wasn’t breastfed and has allergies it may be worthwhile giving them a personalised probiotic designed for their body. Email ei.tugruoyhtiwog@ofni to enquire.
You get bacteria if you were breastfed from your mother’s milk, you get bacteria from the doctor’s hands that handled you, from the environment you played in, from the foods you ate, the places you travelled, the people you came in contact with as a baby. Every new environment that you are exposed to throughout your life moves your microbiome in a different direction making it richer and more diverse. Babies who are born by C-Section don’t have the same exposure to bacteria as vaginally delivered babies who pass down through the birth canal, whos nose, eyes, mouth gets covered in microorganisms which help innoculate the babys gut faster. Giving c section babies probiotics may be useful if they are not fortunate enough to be breast fed. If you are a mum of toddlers and beyond, you may be amazed at how robust toddler immunity can be, you may find they can chew the leg of the buggy or eat out of the dogs bowl or as I remember finding my son washing his teeth out of the toilet bowl!. He didn’t get sick at all after that experience and I realized that I don’t need to be sterilizing the dummy! Much of what we see infections wise is as a result of over cleaning and over sterilisation. Hot boiling water is just as effective as Milton for bottle disinfection solutions. We also don’t need to be bathing babies daily or weekly, the skin microbiome is there to do a job stop scrubbing it off. If possible do not give antibiotics to babies or toddlers unless absolutely neccessary when they are really unwell that is. Let children play in soil, touch the dog, animals etc. Children that live in rural areas have better immune systems because of exposure to the outside world. Try get babies to eat greek yogurt instead of flavoured childrens processed yogurts. Kefir can also be given to children on empty stomach to try to improve diversity of their gut microbiome. Raw honey is full of natural antibiotics, anti infammatory and generally anti microbial so toddlers and mum take this in yogurt to help ward off colds and infections. For more tips follow @gowithyourgutclinic on instagram
Fiona
