[phormula]

It's speculated that cesarian births do not get exposure the the mother's vaginal flora and their microbiome does not get properly seeded.

I wonder if manually exposing the child to the mother's flora would be of any benefit.

[flurie]

A pilot study on this was published pretty recently with some success in terms of passing the mother's microbiome on to the infant, though that's still a long way off from determining the benefits.

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n3/full/nm.4039.html

[downeveryroad]

Thanks for sharing this. Our firstborn was an unscheduled c-section and my wife is now pregnant with our second child. We will likely schedule a c-section this time and I want to do whatever I can to help create a healthy gut microbiome at birth.

[firstworldman]

Before my son was born, we tried to persuade our OB to allow us to do this, or at least to look at the research herself. She wouldn't budge.

As an aside, my son was born 12 lb 1 oz, he now weighs 31 lbs at 5 months. The same weight as my 3 1/2 year old daughter.

[gohrt]

(31-12)3500/ (530) = 440 calories per day, or 18 oz of baby formula per day.

That's approximately 100% efficiency converting dietary calories into body mass, or massive water retention.

You could cure starvation across the world if you good identify the source of that.

[jessaustin]

How was it possible to forbid this procedure? Couldn't the mother (perhaps with some help from you?) just do it herself?

[fixxer]

Given birth weight was already so high, I am skeptical flora has much to do with your son's case. How tall is he?