Babies get a lot from their mothers. But babies born by cesarean section don’t pass through the birth canal and miss out on the benefits from picking up Mom’s microbes on the way out.
Researchers studying the human microbiome have asked: Could there be a way to fix that? If so, it might help restore the microbes a baby naturally gets that help fight off disease and foster normal development.
A small study published Monday in Nature Medicine provides tantalizing evidence that it may be possible.
How? By slathering babies just after birth with a gauze pad that soaked up the microbes in their mothers’ birth canal right before birth.
(click link above to read on NPR.org)