• Digestive discomfort: Colic-like behaviour, fussiness, gas or signs of tummy discomfort.
• Constipation or irregular stools: Hard, infrequent or inconsistent bowel movements.
• Allergy-type symptoms: Skin irritation, rashes or reactions that may resemble eczema or sensitivities.
• Recurrent congestion or wheezing: Episodes of respiratory discomfort without a clear cause.
• Sleep disturbances: Difficulty settling, frequent waking or disrupted sleep patterns.
• Feeding concerns: Discomfort during feeds, frequent spit-ups or unsettled behaviour around feeding.
• Slow or uneven microbial development: Concerns about early gut balance, especially in the first year of life.
• After antibiotics: Changes in digestion or comfort following recent antibiotic use.
• Birth-related microbial questions: Interest in understanding which microbes were transferred during birth.
• General gut imbalance: Ongoing symptoms such as bloating, gassiness or unpredictable stool patterns.
• Early-life conditions: Eczema, allergy-type symptoms or recurrent respiratory issues where microbial patterns may be explored.

The Tiny Health Baby / Child Gut Health Test uses deep-shotgun metagenomic sequencing to analyse bacteria, fungi, viruses, archaea and other microbes present in the stool. This method provides strain-level resolution and detailed relative abundance data, offering insight into early microbial development and overall community structure. The profile highlights beneficial, disruptive and potentially inflammatory microbial groups, as well as markers relevant to early-life gut balance.

The test may be clinically useful when exploring digestive discomfort, stool irregularities, skin sensitivity, sleep disturbances or unsettled behaviour in babies and children. By examining microbial diversity, the presence of key early-life taxa and patterns associated with digestive or immune imbalance, the report helps illustrate how the gut microbiome may be contributing to these presentations. Features relating to early colonisation, seeding and microbial resilience can also be reviewed, particularly in the first year of life.

The Tiny Health Baby / Child Gut Health Test provides a comprehensive view of microbial composition across infancy and childhood using high-depth sequencing. The breadth of information included offers a detailed picture of microbial balance, development and community stability, supporting interpretation of patterns that may relate to comfort, digestion and early-life health.

Specimen

Stool sample 

Device

• 1x Copan 4N6 Swab

Patient preparation

• Please refrain from taking aspirin for two days prior to collecting your sample.
• Never discontinue prescription medication without first consulting your physician.

Age requirements

0-3 or 3-18 years old (please indicate the age interval in the patient's information form)

Medications

You or your child haven’t taken antibiotics in the last 4 weeks.
If you are testing a newborn, wait until your baby is at least 7 days old before collecting the sample.
If you want to see results without probiotics, pause 3-5 days before sampling. But this is not necessary, especially for adults.