Congratulations! You’re having a baby!
And you want to do everything possible to have a healthy pregnancy and childbirth.
Along with eating right, getting some exercise, and taking prenatal vitamins, you’ll want to add “Keep my gut microbiome in healthy balance” to your pregnancy to-do list.
Because a healthy gut microbiome delivers countless health benefits to you and your baby… and an unbalanced, unhealthy gut microbiome can make things tougher for both of you.
Luckily, when you know the right steps, it's easy to maintain a well-balanced, pregnancy-supporting microbiome.
Quick Answer: Your gut microbiome plays a meaningful role during pregnancy. A well-balanced gut, where beneficial probiotic bacteria outnumber pathogens, supports your own health and helps shape your baby in four key ways: it gives your baby a healthy microbial head start, supports newborn brain development through beneficial metabolites, supports healthy blood sugar balance, and supports a smoother pregnancy overall. The gut microbiome naturally shifts during pregnancy to support energy storage, fetal growth, and lactation. You can support that balance with prenatal nutrition, exercise, and a spore-based probiotic that reaches the gut alive. This describes how a healthy microbiome supports the body, not a treatment for any condition.
Why Is Your Gut Microbiome Important During Pregnancy?
Your gut microbiome holds trillions of bacteria, and when beneficial probiotics outnumber harmful pathogens, it supports your health and your baby’s. The microbiome also shifts naturally during pregnancy to support energy storage, fetal growth, and lactation.
Your gut microbiome contains trillions of bacteria, both beneficial probiotic bacteria and harmful pathogenic bacteria. When your gut microbiome is well balanced, probiotics vastly outnumber pathogens.
Your beneficial probiotic bacteria deliver dozens of health benefits, from producing essential B vitamins to helping you maintain a healthy weight… and they play a huge role in your lifelong health.
That includes keeping both you and your baby in great shape while you’re pregnant… and long afterward.
And did you know? Your gut microbiome changes greatly during pregnancy. Your body requires this microbial shift to improve energy storage, support fetal growth, and drive lactation.
Without this change, your body couldn’t properly accept and nourish your baby. And the makeup of your gut microbiome – meaning your mix of gut bacteria – helps determine your baby’s lifelong health.
That’s why supporting the positive balance of beneficial bacteria in your gut microbiome is so important... Because disruptions to that balance can lead to an overgrowth of pathogens, a condition called dysbiosis. And research shows that dysbiosis may increase the chances of problems during your pregnancy.
How Can You Support Your Gut for a Healthy Baby?
You can support a balanced gut microbiome with good prenatal nutrition, exercise, and quality gut support. A strong, balanced microbiome helps set both you and your baby up for a healthier pregnancy in four key ways, described below.
Thankfully, you can easily address – and avoid – dysbiosis with the right gut support (more on that below).
And with a strong microbiome in healthy balance, you can feel confident that you’re setting yourself and your baby up for success.
Here are 4 important ways that your healthy gut fosters a healthy pregnancy…
1. Giving Your Baby a Healthy Head Start
One of the most important things you can do for your baby is to jumpstart their immune system. And that all starts with your gut microbiome.
As the mama, you deliver bacteria to your baby’s gut microbiome, supplying the basis for healthy balance… as long as your gut is in healthy balance. (This gets reinforced during delivery and birth, when your baby gets inoculated with the bacteria as it passes through the birth canal.)
During your pregnancy, your gut microbiome helps:
- Protect you and your baby against infections
- Deliver nutrients to your baby
- Teach your immune system to recognize your baby
- Drive the maturation of your baby’s gut microbiome
2. Your Healthy Gut Helps Your Baby’s Brain Develop
Probiotic bacteria produce dozens of useful compounds that keep you and your baby healthy. And it turns out that some of those compounds – called metabolites – encourage healthy newborn brain development.
Research shows that special metabolites help your baby’s brain form more axons, tiny fibers that connect brain cells and let them communicate. Without enough beneficial bacteria to produce those metabolites, fewer axons develop… and that can affect your baby’s brain power.
Yet another important reason to keep your gut microbiome healthy and happy: It influences your baby’s future brain function!
3. Your Gut May Help Prevent Gestational Diabetes
Dysbiosis has been strongly linked with type 2 diabetes… so it’s not surprising that it plays a role in gestational diabetes too. Gestational diabetes, which is diabetes that first shows up during pregnancy, causes unusually high blood sugar. That can put your health and your baby’s health at risk.
Several studies show that having an unbalanced gut microbiome can lead to gestational diabetes, especially later in your pregnancy. And that may carry over for your baby after birth as well.
Some new research even shows that for women with gestational diabetes, taking probiotics can improve outcomes for them and their babies. Plus, the right probiotics can help safely manage blood sugar in pregnant women.
4. A Healthy Gut Microbiome Increases the Chance of Happy Outcomes
Another reason to make sure your gut stays in healthy balance: Dysbiosis can increase your risk of pregnancy complications.
New scientific research has found that your gut microbiome plays a part in three of the biggest risks to your pregnancy…
- Strep B Infection, one of the most common pregnancy complications, can be avoided with a healthy gut. A well-balanced gut microbiome stops pathogen overgrowth, and that includes Strep B. And a groundbreaking clinical trial found that probiotic support cleared up Strep B in 68% of pregnant women.
- Preterm birth is most commonly caused by bacteria overgrowth in the vagina (vaginal dysbiosis) or widespread inflammation. Both of those risk factors have strong ties to gut dysbiosis – and fixing that problem can help solve the others. High quality gut support helps keep inflammatory compounds under control and restore healthy balance to the gut microbiome. Those outcomes may decrease the risk of preterm birth. (link: https://www.jcgo.org/index.php/jcgo/article/view/571/371)
- Preeclampsia, a dangerous complication for pregnant women and their babies, has been tied directly to gut dysbiosis. Luckily, rebalancing mom’s gut microbiome decreases the risk of severe preeclampsia by 20%, especially late in the pregnancy.
So, giving your gut microbiome extra love and attention can pay off in big ways… like a more stress-free pregnancy.
Frequently Asked Questions About Gut Health and Pregnancy
Why does the gut microbiome matter during pregnancy?
A balanced gut microbiome supports your own health and helps shape your baby. It supports nutrient delivery, immune education, and the natural microbial shift that supports energy storage, fetal growth, and lactation during pregnancy.
How does my gut affect my baby?
You pass bacteria to your baby during pregnancy and birth, which supplies the basis for your baby’s own microbiome. Beneficial bacteria also produce metabolites that support healthy newborn brain development.
What is dysbiosis?
Dysbiosis is an imbalance in the gut microbiome where harmful pathogens overgrow relative to beneficial bacteria. Supporting the balance of beneficial bacteria helps keep the microbiome in a healthy state.
Can probiotics support a healthy pregnancy?
Probiotics support a balanced gut microbiome, which plays a role in many aspects of maternal and infant health. Always talk with your healthcare provider before adding any supplement during pregnancy.
What kind of probiotic survives digestion?
Spore-based Bacillus probiotics are protected by a natural shell that helps them survive stomach acid and reach the gut alive, where they support a balanced microbiome.
Just Thrive Helps Deliver a Happy Pregnancy
You and your baby can share – and enjoy – all of the benefits of a healthy, well-balanced gut microbiome.
Just Thrive Probiotic contains four clinically studied and proven-effective spore probiotics. This team helps clear the way for trillions of beneficial bacteria to flourish in your gut.
Keep your gut microbiome in healthy balance and your pregnancy gut some extra love and support with Just Thrive Probiotic today.
