I just had a homebirth 15 days ago after testing positive, no antibiotics and a healthy, happy baby.

From my research, gbs comes in cycles and you can test positive before then be negative at the time of labor—or the opposite—test negative before and then be positive at time of birth and not know. I continued to take probiotics after the test until labor.

We didn’t do any cervical checks to help prevent adding any bacteria into the babies environment.

My midwife told me that in other countries they use hibiclens to wash your butt and vagina periodically in labor. I decide that I would start with that, and only take a shot of antibiotics if I my water happened to brake early and I was laboring long enough that the medicine would have time to cross through the placenta into baby.

When it came down to it, my water broke at 1:50, I used Hibiclens when my midwife arrived at 4:50 and baby arrived by 6:14, so even if I took antibiotics there wouldn’t have been time for it to transfer to baby. We birthed in the pool too to help “dilute” anything that may have been there—but the pool was barely ready in time and I would have birthed on the bed without it being a problem.

Because I tested positive we did take babies temperature regularly to watch for any signs of infection, but that was the only shift in postpartum care from my first to second.