In the weeks and days leading up to birth, specific species of good bacteria are migrating to key locations in the mother's body and are transferred to the baby during and immediately after birth via the birth canal, immediate skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. The role of these good bacteria is to train the baby's human cells to distinguish between what is "friend" and what is "foe" so that its immune system can fight off attack from pathogens. This process kickstarts the baby's immune system and helps to protect the infant from disease for its entire lifetime.
However, with interventions like use of synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin / Syntocinon), antibiotics, C-section and formula feeding, this microbial transfer from the mother to baby is interfered with or bypassed completely. For babies that enter the world by C-section, their first contact could be with bacteria that is resident in hospitals and from strangers, i.e. not with the special cocktail of bacteria from the mother.
The latest scientific research is now starting to indicate that if the baby is not properly seeded with the mother's own bacteria at birth, then the baby's microbiome, in the words of Rodney R Dietert, Professor of Immunotoxicology at Cornell University, is left "incomplete". Consequently, that baby's immune system may never develop to its full potential, leaving that infant with an increased risk of developing one or more serious diseases later in life.
