Vaginally born infants acquire a gut microbiota resembling their mother's, while C-section infants acquire skin microbes.

“really the primary initial seating of the microbiome is um through the delivery you know in the vaginal canal and so — literally as as you're being delivered you are consuming feal matter that is in the vaginal canal and that's your first seating of microbes”

“literally as as you're being delivered you are consuming feal matter that is in the vaginal canal and that's your first seating of microbes”

“So children born vaginally got microbiota that looks more like that of their mother's colon or vagina. Whereas children that are born by C-section actually have microbes in their gut that are more...the type of microbe that we find more on skin and not necessarily the mother's skin, maybe the doctor or nurse's skin.”

“So when you're, you are born with gut largely sterile and what happens at that point is that there is this land rush by microbes to colonize this new habitat. What we've seen is that children depending if they're born by C-section or vaginally will have very different initial microbial communities.”