MicroBirth Documentary - How Healthy Will Your Children Be?

I have a daughter with Multiple Sclerosis, just one of the non-communicable diseases currently being attributed to the circumstances of a child's birth.

A new documentary, partly funded by an Indiegogo funding campaign, called MICROBIRTH has been completed and launched worldwide. (September 20, 2014). It presents evidence that will change the way we all view childbirth.

Many doctors and health professionals participated in filming. The conclusion is that a child's best hope for avoiding many of the non-communicable diseases on the rise in today's world comes from a natural birth, immediately followed by skin to skin contact with the mother, and prolonged breast-feeding.

Without those elements, the child's immune system is seriously compromised.

The MICROBIRTH documentary questions if the routine use of intervention in child birth could raise the chance of serious disease in later life ... and reveals how we are born can affect our long-term health.

The Indiegogo campaign video (above) reveals what the documentary is about - and gives an insight into who is interviewed in the documentary.

No need to donate to the fundraising campaign. The film has been finished, and is currently being released worldwide.

All that remains now is to spread the word so that people can understand the issues, and take steps to protect their children's long term health. Plus those of us who have already been touched by chronic disease can hopefully receive help as we try to understand how to heal.

My adult daughter was asked to appear on a panel alongside health professionals at one of the premiere screenings in Australia to answer questions regarding her own health issues.

She had already made the link between the circumstances of her birth and her compromised immune system - and taken active steps to improve her gut health (and therefore her immune system) - and her seemingly miraculous recovery has attracted a great deal of local attention.

In the first three years since she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, she had no more than four months between episodes. She lost her ability to balance and walk, and she lost her vision. By January 2014 she was unable to cope with daily tasks and was helped by a full-time live-in carer; not a family member but a woman whose sole job was to help my daughter with all aspects of daily life.

My daughter's MRI scans showed such extensive damage to her brain and spine that neurologists gave her no hope for improvement.

Yet she somehow managed to prove them wrong. She walks again, she sees again, she lives an independent life without a carer, and she's even been given her driver's license back. Nobody (except my daughter and I) believed that was possible.

I am very proud of her. And I am greatly relieved that a documentary has been made to explain to others what it took my daughter years to discover (with no help from her doctors.) My daughter's journey and personal research led her to suspect her gut held the key to her recovery, years before the media or internet searches revealed any clues about the importance of gut bacteria.

It is now three years since her last MS episode and, while she has some residual (minor) problems, she's regained her independence and lives a happy life.

The fact that approximately 85% of our immune system is in our gut lining was a well-kept secret. Highly respected neurologists dismissed our questions about the effects of diet, saying it made no difference what she ate. But we continued our research and finally discovered evidence linking gut health with the immune system.

Once we were aware of that, her focus became restoring the appropriate balance of gut flora and fauna. All the while, she avoided taking mainstream prescription drugs.

Along the way, she began to suspect the circumstances of her birth may have been the underlying cause of the disease that struck her in her 30s. She quizzed me at length.

Because she was born in the 1970s at a time when unmarried mothers were under pressure to give their babies up for adoption, I was not allowed to see or touch my baby when she was born. The hospital gave me medication to stop milk production. (She knew all this.)

It took me about four days to have her returned to me, and I did try to feed her, but she was denied the initial skin to skin contact with me, she did not receive colostrum and breast feeding within hours of being born, and she was mainly bottle-fed.

With no understanding of how vital these issues were at the time of her birth, I failed to effectively kick-start my baby's immune system and provide long-term protection against chronic diseases. I accept I probably (though unintentionally) made my daughter sick.

According to the World Health Organisation, non-communicable diseases (including heart disease, asthma, respiratory diseases, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, some cancers and mental disorders) are at epidemic proportions.

The World Economic Forum has predicted that if this epidemic continues, the world's health system will be bankrupt by 2030 (costing $47 trillion) with the potential of a global economic crisis.

An increasing number of medical professionals believe that natural childbirth followed by nature's method of feeding and nurturing babies (ie breast feeding and skin-on-skin touch associated with breast feeding) is the only way to effectively kickstart a baby's immune system and provide life-long protection from NCDs.

Without this natural start to life, children are 'programmed' to fall victim to chronic diseases. And, it seems, this susceptibility could be passed down to future generations.

My daughter has not yet healed her MS. She is managing it. Without doubt, she has succeeded in achieving what neurologists predicted would be beyond reach. However her MRI scans still show extensive damage.

She will continue to try and restore her immune system so it functions effectively, and we hope that her journey may prove helpful to others with similar problems.

We both hope that everyone will pay attention to the messages in the MicroBirth documentary and support all efforts to find answers to the questions that may lead to preventing NCDs.

Please watch the MicroBirth documentary. Don't wait until you are faced with a chronic disease to start looking for answers. We all need to understand how intervention during childbirth could raise our children's chances of serious disease in later life.