Probiotics upsetting baby’s tummy?

[hollys26]

My DS is 5mo and I was hoping to be able to use probiotics for him long term. He’s a c section baby which I understand will have affected his gut bacteria, on top of which he was given a course of antibiotics at 3.5mo to deal with a UTI. He now has suspected kidney reflux and if confirmed, will be offered a course of low dose antibiotics for 12 months to prevent further infections while the kidney reflux hopefully sorts itself out. Given that the antibiotics will also disrupt his gut I wanted to give him probiotics alongside them.

For about 3 weeks last month I gave him Optibac baby probiotics but started to suspect they were upsetting his tummy. He typically wakes about 3 times during the night but over this period was sometimes waking 4/5/6 times. I stopped them and his sleep did seem to settle (although so hard to tell when he does naturally wake quite a bit). I’ve just started (yesterday) with a different brand of probiotics (the BioCare baby probiotics that were used in the Swansea study) and tonight we’re on our third wake up in 5 hours . He’s just fed for an hour (sometimes happens but more often not) and I could really hear his tummy rumbling.

I’ve looked online and can’t find anything to suggest other people have experienced a similar thing, but I’d love to know if anyone reading this has?

Conscious that I might be linking two things that aren’t related, which might result in me not giving him the probiotics even though they could be really good for his gut health long term...

Any advice or suggestions gratefully received! TY

You might actually do more harm than good. Read this medical paper

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5974413/

You will have more success at creating a healthy gut when weaning starts with a diet rich of vegetables and high on fibre variety and by avoiding the processed baby food, and terrible snacks such as puff, rusk and wafer

Hi Comoran, thanks. I had read that study; there are a handful of research papers on this and the results are mixed and often with a low number of participants. My feeling was that if I was comfortable that no actual damage being done then it couldn’t hurt to use them, particularly in light of the potential risk of antibiotics. These ones have more positive outcomes:

microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-018-0567-4

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5974413/

That said, I do take your point. It’s not a very well developed area of research and I am a bit worried about giving him something he doesn’t need. I just really hate to think about what a year of antibiotics is doing to him. My dad was given antibiotics repeatedly for tonsillitis as a child and developed ulcerative colitis in his 20s, which is unusually young. There might not be a causal link but given what is now being understood about the contribution of the microbiome to overall health I can’t help but wonder.

This study shows how early exposure to antibiotics during delivery affects gut health and potentially impacts the immune system, which I find really worrying:

fn.bmj.com/content/105/2/201.abstract

I guess it’s just a case of trying to weigh up the risks on both sides.

I am as passionate as you when it comes to gut bacteria and I think the links to overall health go even further than we know for sure.

What we have learnt recently is that it is very hard to change, add, increase the species only by swallowing a pill or drops without changing the food.

It is like sending a spaceship to Mars fill of human to start a new colony but without sending food for them. They will all die.
You will have more success in building colonies of beneficial species by planning from day 1 of weaning on feeding them as much as feeding your child.
Give him real yoghurt and not the dessert-like one for children
Give him whole grains and not white flour,
and a more of vegetable with a maximum variety so include leeks, onions (onion soup is sweet)
Processed and ultra processed baby food, so baby porridge full of sugar when classic porridge is fine, and the whole range of "self-feeding" snack will push for the harmful bacteria.
Real chickpeas, and not industrial hummus full of additives, lentils, beans not the sugary or worse the no sugar ones with sweeteners, ..

If you are sending microbiota now without food there for them

At the same time, go easy and don't overdo the fibre. It is a marathon not a sprint. Coursera has a MOOC on the Gut which I did in it first edition in 2016 . It is now a self paced course and of course free www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome of course with a baby you don't have time to do the full course, but just watching the video lessons while doing the washing up or folding clothes will be interesting.

DS2 has such severe reflux he got his first course of antibiotics when he was 3 weeks old due as he had aspiration pneumonia (vomit in lungs caused pneumonia) . From there on, he was at least once a month on them. Not only when I was pregnant with him, I was on 4 months straight antibiotics,
He is now severely allergic to many antibiotics , has a weak immune system, asthma and weird allergies. We have been working wth a naturopath here in Australia to build a microbiome but it takes time, and of course, a skin scratch from Mountainbiking will not heal, become infected and then very infected and he will have to take AB again and we are back at the bottom of the ladder.

I am very sensitive to the topic, but you should be careful and observe listen to your child. We still know too little. It is the food fist that matters the most. You can help with a designed probiotics but you need the prebiotic as well.

Hi @Cormoran - thanks so much for sharing your experience and sorry to hear about your son's issues. I'm asthmatic and suffer with eczema and allergies so I empathise - it's super interesting to hear about your work with a naturopath and get your perspective.

I've decided to pause the probiotics and will look into building a healthy gut with food once he starts weaning. Hopefully some more research will be done to help us all understand the use of probiotics further.

Good luck with your son, I hope you're able to help him.

My C section daughter unfortunately had IV antibiotics within few weeks of birth
She had brownish poo despite being breast fed.
She also developed baby acne.
After doing some reading - I introduced a probiotic- it was Optibac or Proven - but can’t quite remember which sorry- I had bought both at the time. But Optibac I think the more likely one.
I started at a quarter of the dose or less. Gradually built up after a week or so. I think it was at half the dose when my baby’s poo turned the usual breast feeding yellow and was not offensive smelling (I didn’t recognise she had soiled her nappy from the smell when it first changed). Her baby acne cleared up and did not come back. Could be a co-incidence - but I don’t think so.
We pushed our luck and increased the dose to full recommended - she got diarrhoea so we stopped the probiotic- and did not introduce again.
Perhaps try restarting probiotic v slowly?

Please try and not to worry- babies are amazingly resilient.

I should add that we did not go straight to the probiotic after she was given the antibiotics- we gave her some weeks to recover - but it was due to the brown poo continuing that we used the probiotic. The change was literally overnight in her poo and acne when I think we got to half the dose of recommended. Sorry to confuse you- but I’ve read through the instructions for use for both brands and I think it was Proven that we finally used.