After his son was born, the singer Camilo told the program La Resistencia that his wife, Eva Luna, had eaten the placenta that had been providing oxygen and nutrients to the baby during the nine months that the pregnancy lasted. Also Jennifer Lopez or some of the Kardashian sisters have carried out this practice, which is increasingly popular and has few proven benefits and is backed by science. A video of a woman giving birth on the beach has also recently spread through social networks. , naturally, but without any surveillance or medical control, neither at the time of delivery nor during pregnancy. Given the increase in popularity of these practices and the consultations about them, the prestigious journal Pediatrics, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has published an extensive report to analyze the risks and benefits of some of these increasingly discussed exercises such as water births, ingesting the placenta after giving birth or lotus births – those in which the umbilical cord after delivery–. Giving birth in water More and more hospitals and birth centers have bathtubs in which mothers can give birth or at least this r immersed during some of the phases of delivery. Two main reasons have made water an increasingly chosen place for the child to be born. First, because the transition from the inside to the outside of the uterus is less traumatic for the baby when passing from water to water and, second, because in the first labor stage of birth, water has an analgesic effect and reduces the use of anesthesia. When the expulsive phase arrived, the studies prepared for the Pediatrics report detail that the water had no benefit and could even lead to some complications, such as “hypothermia, drowning or near drowning, respiratory distress and infections due to exposure to organisms transmitted by water. The recommendation of these experts, therefore, is to “develop procedures to clean bathtubs, monitor mothers safely and monitor fetuses during delivery.” they are exposed to bacteria from the mother’s vagina, something that can alter the future development of the child’s microbiome. For this reason, many parents decide to take a sample of these bacteria with gauze and transfer them to the nose, mouth and skin of the newborn. This is called vaginal seeding. However, the new study by American Pediatricians does not recommend this practice outside of a research setting. At the moment, no study has proven its benefits, but many of its risks have. “Once the placenta is expelled, there is an absence of circulation and, therefore, the tissues become necrotic,” the study explains. This becomes a source of colonizing bacteria, which recommends removing both the placenta and the cord from the child as soon as possible, since some cases of sepsis in newborns have been documented due to this practice. Eating the placenta Placentophagia is the name given to the action to consume this organ that provides oxygen and nutrients to the unborn once it is expelled from the uterus. It is very common in other non-human mammals, it is believed that to avoid predators, but there are also mothers who ingest the placenta as a ritual that celebrates the end of pregnancy or to benefit from perceived medicinal properties. However, since it is contaminated by bacteria it can cause an infection in the person who takes it. It can be prepared raw, cooked or portioned into pills or capsules, but putting it on fire or dehydrating it is not enough to get rid of GBS, HIV, HBV or the hepatitis C virus. The report also adds that there have been cases of children with neonatal sepsis caused by the consumption of the placenta by their mothers in the form of capsules. Postponing the hepatitis B vaccine The first vaccine that a newborn receives is hepatitis B, since this infectious disease is transmitted from biological parents children perinatally, that is, in the period immediately before or after birth. Having a baby come into contact with this virus prematurely can carry countless long-term health risks, such as chronic infections or cancer. It is becoming more and more common that instead of giving the injection within a few hours of birth, parents decide to do it after a few weeks. However, according to the Pediatrics report, this entails great harm and even speaks of intervention by the authorities in cases of parents who do not know if they have been in contact with the virus or who are positive if they refuse to administer this vaccine to their children. Delayed bath This practice is one of the few in the report that has the approval of the researchers, who join the WHO recommendation to postpone the first bath until after the first 24 hours of the child’s life. If this is not possible, at least wait six from birth. Not separating the baby from its mother immediately after birth to give it a bath seems to increase the success rate of the initiation of breastfeeding and the preservation of maternal vaginal bacteria that remain on the skin of the child after passing through the birth canal, which are beneficial to their microbiome. The exception that would confirm the rule in this case is that the child may have come into contact with fluids upon leaving the womb that may contain bloodborne pathogens, including HIV, HBV, hepatitis C, HSV, or syphilis , but the report concludes that more research is still needed on the impact on the child’s microbiome of delaying bath time and its influence on the incidence of neonatal sepsis.