4 Benefits of Probiotics for Babies
Probiotics are living microorganisms (bacteria, really) that offer wonderful health benefits. They increase the number of microflora within your body. Babies are born with very little microflora present in their intestinal tracks. They acquire this healthy bacteria over their first year from their mother’s breast milk.
If your child is breastfeeding, he doesn’t need any probiotic supplements. The bacteria in your breast milk is sufficient. However probiotics can be helpful after your baby has been through a long period of vomiting or diarrhea due to a virus. Bad viruses could deplete the bacteria colonies in the intestines and require regeneration.
You can find probiotics in supplements or in food products like yogurt and kefir. The labels should say something similar to “Live and active cultures,” which refers to the living bacteria. It sounds a little gross, but it’s actually very healthy.
1. Probiotics help reduce eczema.
If you notice your infant has itchy, scaly, red patches all over his skin, it’s likely eczema. A common cause of eczema in babies is a sensitivity to dairy products, either from food or dairy products you have consumed that pass through your breast milk. Probiotics are shown to reduce the frequency and severity of eczema flare-ups, and boost your child’s immune system enough that he may outgrow the allergy. Be sure to buy a probiotic that was not grown with dairy ingredients.
2. Probiotics help with tummy troubles.
Probiotics helps restore a natural balance to a little one’s digestive track. This primarily helps when your child has stomach problems and diarrhea, including issues that stem from antibiotics. Regular probiotics will make him less likely to catch a stomach virus, and make the symptoms of any bugs he does catch less severe. Studies also show that children suffering from constipation and given probiotics have improved stool consistency and more frequent bowel movements.
3. Probiotics improves the immune system.
A sick child is a terrible thing. They can’t quite understand why they feel so poorly and you only have so many remedies to administer. Probiotics are great immune system boosters. They have been linked to reducing the number of childhood illnesses, like the common cold, the flu, and strep throat.
4. Probiotics can prevent infant thrush or yeast rashes.
While probiotics aren’t capable of healing a yeast infection, they can help prevent one. Infant thrush is usually present on an infant’s mouth after a round of antibiotics, but sometimes appears without any known cause. It’s painful and can last for weeks. Start a probiotics a few hours after your child has gone through their antibiotic treatments to prevent thrush. (The delay is to prevent the antibiotics from killing the probiotics.)
Written by Stephanie Parker from Sleepingbaby.com, inventors of the Zipadee-Zip
The motto for Sleeping Baby, makers of the Zipadee-Zip, is: "Inspiring Dreams One Night at A time," and that, in a nutshell, is how it all started…with one little dream that has since become the Parker family's reality. When Brett and Stephanie Parker's daughter, Charlotte, was born, the feeling that welled up inside of them was indescribable; they never realized until first looking into those baby blues of hers that they were even capable of that kind of love.
When it was time to transition baby from swaddling, the Parkers tried every sleep sack on the market and every swaddle weaning trick they could find for nearly two weeks and nothing worked to get baby Charlotte to fall and stay asleep.
Stephanie became determined to restore sleep and sanity to their household and set out to find a solution that would soothe Charlotte's startle reflex and provide her the cozy womb-like environment she loved so much but still give her the freedom to roll over and wiggle around in her crib safely. Out of sheer desperation and exhaustion, the Zipadee-Zip was born. The first Zipadee-Zip(R) Stephanie put together on her little sewing machine worked like magic!
To date tens of thousands of Zipadee-Zips have been sold and all from word-of-mouth marketing. It is so rewarding for the Parkers to see other parents and babies getting the sleep they both need and deserve!
For more information, visit sleepingbaby.com.
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