Should you use ‘vaginal seeding’ if your baby is born by caesarean?
There has been an emerging trend among mothers who have a caesarean section for “vaginal seeding”, a process that exposes newborn babies to the micro-organisms they would normally encounter during vaginal birth. This week, though, Danish obstetricians writing in the international journal BJOGsaid that it “could do more harm than good”. Doctors at the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists also warned against it.
Although the research is new and untested, experts in award-winning documentary Microbirth suggest a link between the health of our microbiome and the “epidemic” of non-communicable diseases (such as asthma, eczema and cardiovascular disease) that the World Health Organization fears could bankrupt our health systems.
Dr Maria G Dominguez-Bello, at the New York School of Medicine, theorises that exposing babies born by caesarean to vaginal microbes may gift them a more normal colony of organisms with potential positive health benefits.
Some mothers whose babies are born by caesarean are requesting that their babies be swabbed with vaginal microbes. Photograph: Catherine Delahaye/Getty Images
