One potential hazard that Moms may face during labor and delivery is the use of IV antibiotics for Group B Strep (GBS) infections.
At around 35-37 weeks gestation, a pregnant woman is routinely given a swab test that determines if they are infected with Group B Strep. This bacterium is very common. Approximately one in every three women carries it in her vagina.
The Group B Strep bacterium, while no threat to the pregnant woman, has the potential to cause very serious health consequences for the newborn baby.
Most women who test positive for Group B Strep are able to go on and deliver perfectly normal, healthy babies with no complications. Â However, a few babies exposed to Group B Strep may develop pneumonia or meningitis either immediately after birth or up to a week later. Â Some babies may have long term vision or hearing loss from the exposure, though this is quite rare.
Like the dangerous, synthetic Vitamin K shot that is administered to all newborns for an extremely rare, bleeding into the brain disorder, the Standard of Care for all pregnant women testing positive for GBS is IV antibiotics during labor and delivery even though Group B Strep infections occur only in approximately 1 out of every 4444 babies born to GBS colonized women (.0225%).
In one review of babies with early-onset Group B Strep infections born in Southern California Kaiser Permanente Hospitals from 1988-1996, use of IV antibiotics during labor “did not change the clinical spectrum of disease or the onset of clinical signs of infection within 24 hours of birth for term infants with EOGBS infection.” (Pediatrics, Aug 2000; 106: 244-250).
Did you get that?
1 out of every 4444 babies still gets sick with GBS infections even if their mothers are treated with IV antibiotics during labor and delivery. Â IV antibiotics make absolutely no difference to the outcome of babies born to Group B Strep colonized Mothers and yet this miserable failure of a medical protocol is still considered Standard of Care for pregnant women who test GBS positive.
Incidentally, antibiotics for a common related condition known as strep throat are not usually necessary either. Doctors just prescribe drugs for this condition because it is easy and patients expect it according to the Journal Canadian Family Physician (1).
Strep throat remedies using natural antibiotics such as cayenne pepper, manuka honey, garlic, and turmeric are fast and effective without the side effects.
Beware of doctors who tell you that the “medical research” indicates that this treatment does work. Â Research is a very different thing from what happens in practice. Research may indicate that a treatment works, but in practice, it may not work at all or may cause even more serious consequences than what the treatment is trying to prevent in the first place!
For example, children whose Mothers undergo IV antibiotics during labor and delivery appear to be highly predisposed for potentially lifelong complications, including severe allergies, asthma, ADHD, and autism just to name a few.
I realize this is anecdotal observation, but most children of the women I know who received IV antibiotics during labor and delivery have some sort of chronic health issue that the parents are continuing to struggle with years after the birth.
Another unintended yet extremely dangerous consequence of IV antibiotics during labor and delivery is the increased occurrence of antibiotic-resistant, “superbug” infections like MRSA.
In addition, IV antibiotics have increased the occurrence of infections such as sepsis and E. Coli. Â Â The sobering truth is that the risks of developing a superbug from IV antibiotics are much greater than the chance of saving your baby from Group B Strep infection.
It is clear that avoiding IV antibiotics during labor and delivery needs to be a priority for every pregnant woman.
It is imperative that this message gets out to Mothers-to-be that antibiotics don’t work to prevent a Group B Strep infection and this treatment has a high potential to predispose your child to the development of auto-immune disease later in childhood. Â Why hasn’t this treatment already been abandoned for lack of efficacy?
While it is always a difficult task to explain pure stupidity especially when such behavior comes from highly educated people trained to deliver care in a supposedly objective manner, my guess is that the boost to the bottom line in requiring IV antibiotics for every GBS positive pregnant woman (one out of every three!) is so powerful and such a dependable source of revenue for hospitals that only pure outrage and refusal of this treatment from an increasing number of pregnant women will stop the practice.
What is the best approach to avoid this dangerous treatment in the meantime while OBs continue to falsely trumpet it as somehow helpful to the birth outcome? Â In my case, I simply refused the Group B Strep test outright.
Even if you’ve had a negative GBS test already (for example, I tested negative with my first pregnancy), you can still test positive with later pregnancies, so when I became aware of the uselessness of this treatment, I no longer submitted to the test at all. With no positive test hanging over your head, medical personnel has a much weaker case for insisting upon IV antibiotics in the first place.
In my opinion, it is also best to seek an out of the hospital birthing environment where the birth process is not viewed and treated as a medical event. Medical personnel attending to a laboring Mom at a freestanding birth center or home birth are much less likely to favor the utilization of this type of treatment than the same personnel in a hospital setting.
If you choose to refuse the test as I did, make sure to consume a quality probiotic throughout pregnancy and especially during the final weeks of gestation which will promote the growth of beneficial bodily bacteria and will give any GBS bacteria (if you even have any) very little opportunity to flourish and harm your baby during the delivery process.
An additional habit to develop while pregnant is to utilize the benefits of fresh vegetable juicing as this practice has a wonderful, alkalizing effect on the body chemistry, Â discouraging the growth of any pathogens such as GBS and promoting the growth of healthy, beneficial, body flora. Ideally, fresh vegetable juice should be consumed on an empty stomach to have the most pronounced, alkalizing effect (2 hours after eating and do not eat anything for about 20 minutes after drinking the juice).
If you are reading this and you have recently given birth to a baby and you received IV antibiotics during delivery, it is IMPERATIVE even if you are breastfeeding that you get your baby on a Bifidus supplement immediately (there are brands made especially for infants) and continue for a month or two so that your baby’s gut can be recolonized with beneficial bacteria.
It is also wise for the Mother to start taking a therapeutic strength probiotic right away as her own beneficial bacteria will have been decimated by the IV antibiotics and her breastmilk will most likely not contain the number of good bacteria that it should as a result.
Interesting. A group of friends and I were just discussing this as a theory. I was + and had the IV. My daughter (now 3) suffers from a damaged gut and inability to consume most dairy products. It was none until we found natural ways of healing. Many others shared similar experiences with antibiotics and gut health.
I was positive for my first pregnancy and the delivery was very difficult. Pitocin, saline, penicillin, and epidural. Needless to say, I was uneducated about options, and didn’t know any better. This time around, I became educated and chose an alternative route! I wish I knew then what I know now! Thank you for posting this!!!!
I *wish* I had known this with my first child. The particular group of doctors I saw back in the day, would continue to treat you for Group Strep B with subsequent children and not require any additional testing. If I’d only known then what I know now … The blessing in all that is that my daughters will be well informed.
Thank you for this. Would you be willing to do an article on what to do to normalize a baby’s gut flora who was born via c-section? I couldn’t find any articles on your website that discussed this.
Sarah, I drink water kefir daily (about 2-3 cups). Would you recommend an additional probiotic supplement in addition to the kefir?
Are you suggesting the intrapartum antibiotics for prevention of early-onset GBS in neonates do not work????
This is clearly WRONG. The policy of universal screening and treatment of positive women has reduced the incidence of EOGBS by 80%
I agree also with the last comment regarding your misrepresentation of the conclusions of the study from Pediatrics.
Hi Sarah,
I’ve been researching GBS, hibiclens, antibiotics and the risks/rewards etc, and came across your article. Naturally I was shocked to read your article that seemed to pretty clearly point to an ineffectiveness of antibiotic treatments in treating strep B, when doctors/midwives/CDC etc are pretty adamant about its use. However looking into the article you’ve linked to (The Influence of Intrapartum Antibiotics on the Clinical Spectrum of Early-Onset Group B Streptococcal Infection in Term Infants, Pediatrics, August 2000) it doesn’t look like the article says what your article does (i.e., that antibiotics are a waste of time) – rather, its saying that if your baby IS infected with GBS, antibiotics don’t reduce the damage at all. The exact words from the abstract is “Exposure to antibiotics during labor did not change the clinical spectrum of disease or the onset of clinical signs of infection within 24 hours of birth for term infants with EOGBS infection.” Note that last bit – for term infants WITH EOGBS infection.
Now, I can see your article is from 2010 and I haven’t read all the comments through, so you might have clarified your position somewhat, but reading through your article it sounds like you’re saying that antibiotics don’t reduce the amount of infection at all (which they do). The benefit of antibiotics isn’t that it stops GBS, but rather it reduces the number of infections.
Thanks
Thank you for posting this. I was GBS positive when I had my son in the hospital and was put on the antibiotic drip. I wanted to have a natural hospital birth (I now see what an oxy moron that is, but I’ve come a long way since then), but I had a terrible reaction to the antibiotic which sent me in to a downward spiral of other medicines and interventions. On top of that, my son was born with horrible food sensitivities which probably came as a result of the antibiotics killing so much of his flora even as he was being born, and suffered from terrifying reflux and even blood in his stool for the few couple of months which the pediatrician could not figure out. I’m now pregnant with our second child and will be doing a LOT of things differently this time, thanks to plenty of research to include the wonderful information you put out there. Thank you again.
Oh, and I just wanted to put out there that my midwife said having a water birth also limits the chances of passing GBS on to the baby, so if you have the option of doing that and you have GBS or you opted not to test, that might be a good route to take.
I am 37wks and 3days and I tested positive at 36weeks but did not get the results until yesterday. I immediately started more probiotics and I am going to do the garlic and tea tree protocal as well as add Fem-dophilus to my probiotics. My midwife (hospital birth) will let me test again however she says the resuts take 48 hrs.
How soon should I get tested again? I want to get the results before I go into labor but I also want to give the different things I am doing to work so I get a negative test. I also plan to continue these things until delivery.
I tested positive during my second pregnancy. Fortunately, my midwife recommended I try some natural remedies that would boost my immune system as well as eliminate sugar from my diet. I retested a few weeks later and the results were healthy vaginal flora (negative). I retested weekly for two weeks which also came back negative. Because I had so many negative tests, I ate more sugar than normal. I took what I thought would be my last GBS test before going into labor, and it came back positive (yikes). I made sure to eliminate all sugar from my diet again. At my last prenatal appointment (the day I went into labor) my midwife was able to get one more culture…the results were another negative. Goes to show how much our diet can affect our immune system!!! I am thankful I got to try these remedies and see for myself that they actually work. The tests prove it!
What test did your midwife do that have hew results that quick. My midwife says that the results will take 48hrs?
Cara, Sooooo sorry I didn’t reply sooner. I didn’t realize you had asked me a question. My midwife did the normal GBS tests that take 48 hours to get results. I should have clarified that we didn’t find out the results of my last test (the day I went into labor) until a couple of days after I had our baby. That final test was to see if eating a healthier diet again even a few days before I went into labor could make for a negative test, which it did. We went ahead and had a homebirth despite the fact that I tested positive for the GBS but my midwife took all precautions during labor to prevent any transmission to baby (hibiclens vaginal rinses, hibiclens in water in birth tub, water not broken for too long…etc.). I know this is a little late, but hope it helps for future reference.