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.
Antibiotics in labor only decrease incidence of EOGBSD (<48 hours after birth). There is no effect on LOGBSD (>72 hours after birth). Antibiotics decrease incidence of transmission to baby, as evidenced by decreased infectious process in baby, from approx. 5-8% in untreated GBS positive moms to approx. 1-3% in treated GBS positive moms.
A treated GBS positive mom can still have her baby develop serious EOGBSD (early-onset GBS disease) or LOGBSD (late-onset GBS disease).
The most significant factor demonstrating a mom’s, and thus baby’s, potential for infection is GBS IgG antibody presence or absence. This is not screened for during pregnancy.
There are also evidences of more virulent strains of all bacteria. What we may need is strain typing to help us better identify virulence.
Regardless, we simply do not have the tools to eradicate at this point.
In my midwifery practice, I have cared for two moms who were GBS positive and were adequately treated per CDC guidelines. Yet, both of their babies contracted GBS disease. One early, one late.
My first died of GBS infection… I would choose allergies and gut issues over that anyday. GBS is nothing to mess around with.
I guess there are pros and cons to both sides of this issue. Tested negative with first 7 births. Positive for the 8th. Had to have many bags of antibiotics because the induction was taking so long (2 days). I have never been the same. UTI’s, yeast infections, just to name a couple. My daughter had problems with thrush and now was diagnosed with severe seasonal allergies. I have always wondered if these issues were because of the antibiotics I had.
I’m one of the rare ones who tested negative (for both pregnancies) and still my son contracted GBS. He was born totally healthy with a great delivery, but within 12 hours he went into respiratory distress and the infection was already sepsis. Being unable to hold my newborn bc he was deathly ill, sitting there as he endured a spinal tap, multiple iv’s/ blood draws, and spending 2 weeks in the NICU is the hardest thing I’ve endured as a mother. All of the doctors/ nurses that I spoke with had stories of babies that weren’t as lucky as my son–if we had not been at the hospital, his infection may have not been caught so quickly. I shutter to think what could have happened if we had taken him home already. The infection is not always easy to spot (a pediatrician dismissed him, it was my astute postpartum nurse who thought something was wrong).
While I love natural remedies and avoid unnecessary antibiotics, I too want to reiterate to not dismiss this decision of antibiotics too quickly. The neonatology team we were under the care of would definitely disagree with your representation of the effective use of the antibiotics during labor. Our doctors hadn’t seen a case as bad as my son in awhile, and completely attributed it to the fact that I had received no antibiotics (because I was a rare false negative) Others in the NICU who were treated and still showed GBS signs were released within hours/ days, not spending 2 weeks there, like my son. Like others have said, I think treating women with various things (high dose probiotics, etc) during pregnancy should be more the norm, as well as re- testing the bacteria closer to birth. (My case is a prime example of how things can change from 35 weeks to birth) I think babies who received the antibiotics during birth should be put on a probiotic regime, as well as the mother.
Again, like others have also said, it’s not black and white, and no mother wants to do anything that could cause digestive, behavioral, etc problems down road, but contracting GBS is a very serious and deadly issue and I would receive those antibiotics in a heartbeat after enduring what we went through.
Liz, my story is so similar, except that my daughter came out and right away they knew something was wrong. I was a false negative with no warning signs until I broke a fever when I started pushing (when it was too late). My baby girl had EOGBSD pneumonia and sepsis and we also spent two weeks in the NICU. I didn’t hold her until day five when she came off the ventilator. My milk production suffered and I was continually behind, so that after six months she was underweight and I had to go to formula (nothing against mommies who do formula, but I didn’t want to have to switch).
Yes, food allergies, thrush, and stomach issues are all issues that I wouldn’t wish on any child. But they aren’t life-threatening. GBS is. Please take that into consideration.
And lots of people don’t get the antibiotics and deliver just fine. 99.5% of moms will. (Not a made-up statistic – it is 199/200.) But as the 0.5%, I can tell you it is a nightmare.
My mother had GBS, did not receive the antibiotics, and before I was four weeks old I developed spinal meningitis. I had seizures as a result and was put on medication to control these for over a year.
I tested positive during two of my pregnancies. One I received antibiotics before and the other I stayed for observation with baby. They and I were fine both times.
There are pros and cons both ways but after seeing what my parents went through with me as an infant I would probably not hesitate to do antibiotics again.
My 3 pregnancies were as follows- GBS negative, GBS positive, and GBS negative. Luckily they were home births with an old school amazing midwife, and she did not insist that I do anything when we found out I was positive. We both were just fine by the way 🙂 I think that evn a step beyond your article and view of birth is what needs to happen in our society. To me, we need to stop fearing birth all together. We need to stop thinking about hospital vs birth center, birth center as a middle ground, etc. Birth is so normal, and natural, and for healthy women it is safe!! This silly obsession OB’s seem to have over our GBS status is just another reason for us to fear birth, when really it is just another variation of normal. We’re all different, but our bodies all still work to give birth to our baby’s with nothing more than a little encouragement and loving support. Below I’m posting an article I like better than yours (sorry, no offense, it just has more numbers, and I’m a numbers type of gal) that helped me back when I was GBS positive. I was, at one point, still arguing back and forth about safety, numbers, care providers, etc, and now, thankfully, I am at a point in my life where I believe in complete acceptance and surrender to something greater than I- the birthing process we were all created to be capable of, the knowledge that we may not conciously know, but it is inside everyone one of us, our bodies know how to birth. Simple as that. http://mothering.com/pregnancy-birth/treating-group-b-strep
A baby born by unplanned c-section can surely still enter the birth canal and be exposed to GBS. Many times c-sections are done due to fetal distress during pushing (where the baby is surely entering the birth canal.)
That said, I do think that antibiotics are overused and can have consequences. I would like to see mothers tested for GBS at 36 weeks and given 1-2 weeks of following an alternative protocol (of garlic and marshmallow suppositories or another CAM alternative) to be used daily along with high dose probiotics. Then retest. If still positive, recommend antibiotcs but try to keep it to 2 doses (start the first one only in active labor or if membranes rupture early). I’d also like to see mamas on high dose probiotics for the whole pregnancy AND postpartum regardless of GBS status and especially if positive–and start the infant born to a GBS+ mother who received abx on probiotics as well from birth.
It’s not a black or white issue. Many women will be fine if they refuse the abx. However in the rare case of baby does get infected, it can be very serious. So something mothers need to be very informed about–a decision not to be taken lightly.
I had home births and was positive in one pregnancy. We did nothing about it, we were both fine.
I’m also not sure that you are accurately representing the studies on the effectiveness of antibiotic treatment, and parents need all the information to make a truly informed decision, though I whole heartily agree that antibiotic prophylaxis may come with far reaching consequences. http://evidencebasedbirth.com/groupbstrep/
The problem with refusing the test and having an unknown GBS status is that most healthcare systems require antibiotics just the same for an unknown status as for a positive result, I feel like ensuring you have healthy flora before testing lessens the chance of testing positive (and is also a positive for protecting baby) and that a negative result is your “best bet” for avoiding antibiotics or the fight that ensues with refusing, which definitely includes keeping your baby longer (if you do deliver in the hospital) we also need to remember that half of all newborns with early onset GBS are born to mothers testing negative, so it’s not a free ticket for clear sailing.