Natural Birth
Anyone 'cure' GBS+ during pregnancy?
I was GBS+ last time around and it wasn't a big deal. I had a swab at 15 weeks this pregnancy and just got news that I am GBS+ again.
This time around it is a bigger deal to me because I will have a hospital birth and would prefer to labour at home for most of it.
I could probably go into the hospital at the start of labour, have an IV, and then go home to labour. But it's not my ideal scenario.
Anyone successfully treated their GBS+ during pregnancy with a natural remedy? By successful I mean getting a negative test.
Just starting to read up and seeing that a probiotic regimen and garlic are recommended in a few places.
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Re: Anyone 'cure' GBS+ during pregnancy?
I wrote a post on my blog recently about GBS. There are a few links at the bottom about natural remedies. Good luck!
https://midwife101.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/gbs-a-lesson/
I have seen a few stories online of women using garlic (among other natural treatments) and still ending up with GBS-related complications. I doubt personally that it's particularly helpful.
Our doula told us that once a + is on your record, most doctors & hospitals require an IV with antibiotics throughout labor regardless of whether you re-test negative later on due to liability issues, so I would double check with your doctor or hospital before you spend a ton of time trying to clear it up (also I think I've read it can come and go on it's own, without any treatment?). Hopefully that isn't the case at your hospital and you can re-test later on and stay at home for as long as you want. GL!!
BFP #1: 10-25-11, MC: 11-1-11 @ 5w5d
BFP#2: 12-29-11, DS born September 2012
TFAS: July 2014, BFP#3: 12-29-14, EDD 9-9-15
Natural Ways to Prevent GBS+ Flares
Probiotics (good expensive ones are the best - liquids also, ask at your local health-food store or your midwife)
Yogurt - eating lots of that can help
Eating a lot of garlic (I can't really stomach this right now being pregnant...it's the smell)
Vaginal insertion of garlic (never tried it, but I guess there are "safe" ways to do this, I'm just leery)
However, there are other alternatives to the IV. Talk with your doc/midwife and ask about giving yourself an injection at home of antibiotics as soon as labor starts - it still takes 4-6 hours to cross the placenta (like an IV), so if you have shorter labors, you should mention that. For shorter labors you can take antibiotics orally for about a week or so before you might deliver and then double-up on the day you go into labor. Taking a lot of antibiotics before delivery (or during delivery) can result in yeast issues sometimes, but the yogurt should help counter-act that also.
As my midwife(wives) have told me, it's rare to see a case of GBS+ passed on to a kid and there are actually 30+ strains of Group-B strep with only a couple being trouble for a newborn, but the complications from GBS+ for a newborn when it does happen are always serious.
Personally, I took that chance last time since I showed up at the birth center about an hour before I gave birth and there was no time to get any antibiotics in me or the kid, but honestly that was the last thing I was thinking since I thought I had a lot more time and ended up getting there in transition and pushing shortly after. I bet it all works out for you also.
...baby #3 is here...
My second daughter is two weeks old, and I was GBS+ and hoping for a homebirth this pregnancy (GBS+ and hospital birth last pregnancy). I made it my mission during this pregnancy to do everything I could to naturally eradicate GBS from my system so that I could be most comfortable with a homebirth (legally homebirth midwives in my state can deliver GBS+ moms but I wasn't sure how my DH and I would feel about the risks).
I literally did not eat processed sugar this entire pregnancy. I stayed away from excess gluten, ate tons of fermented foods, took a 40 billion probiotic every day, drank a huge greens and yogurt smoothie every day, etc. And I was still GBS+ at 36 weeks. To have all the info I could, I asked my homebirth midwife to test my urine after I received the positive swab. My urine tested positive too.
I think it's possible I could have "achieved a negative result" had I done a garlic protocol or hibiclens wash before the test. But that doesn't make sense to me - if I am at a higher risk of delivering a GBS positive baby then I want to know it. (Also if I got a negative result from garlic I would feel compelled to do it every day until I had the baby from 36 weeks on and that's a LOT of garlic up the hooha).
I realize it's all relative here - even testing positive in my urine meant a 1 in 25 chance, which isn't actually that high but is a lot higher than 1 in 4,000 with antibiotics or 1 in 10,000 if I truly didn't have it in my system.
I ended up transferring with my homebirth midwife to receive antibiotics in labor (and I ended up having such a fast labor that I barely got them in time, so they gave baby a shot of penicillin to be extra safe). It's not the choice everyone would have made, but it was what we felt most comfortable with. There are lots of risks in birth but this is just one that scares me and that I know lots about. I would have felt terrible if there was something I could have done to radically mitigate it and I hadn't.
I know someone who tested positive at 37 weeks, achieved a negative result at 39 weeks from doing the garlic insertion, and ended up having a sick GBS+ baby who had to be at the hospital for two weeks. Baby girl is totally fine now. I know it's anecdotal, but I don't mean it as a scare tactic. It just convinced me that achieving a negative result doesn't mean you don't have GBS.
Sorry to write you a novel here. I just thought so hard about this during pregnancy and came to look at it as like a blood type or something, not something wrong or defective about me that I had any control over.
@goldene I appreciate all of this.
I started to delve into researching GBS+ and have decided to go with the antibiotic again this time. I'll still take a load of probiotic before hand and post-birth, and do infant probiotic on this new baby as well, but I'm not comfortable with the risks. From what I have read the strain is usually in your gut and while you can achieve a negative result by using some cleanses, including garlic, the GBS will most likely come back. Not worth the risk to me for my newborn.