delayed cord clamping

[warrior mama]

I've been looking at doing a birth plan and was wondering about delayed cord clamping - why do this?
Any info gratefully received.....

[nyakanyasko]

My understanding is some of the baby's blood volume is in the cord until the cord stops pulsing. If you cut the cord before then, not all of the baby's blood makes it back into the baby's body.

It's a thing to weigh depending on your situation though. My husband has a genetic condition we need to test the baby for, and the best way to do it, since the test requires quite a bit of blood, is to take cord blood. That is easier than drawing that much blood from a baby. Or for people who are choosing to do cord blood banking. My understanding is that if you need the cord blood for something like this, they can't delay cutting the cord too long or there might not be enough left for what you need it for.

Hope this helps!

[paxye]

DDC crashing here... but I saw the post in new posts

Here is a great youtube video that discusses cord clamping... explained by midwifes and doctors.

[WeasleyMum]

You want to make sure the baby gets all of his/ her blood back from the cord and the placenta, before you break that connection! It can be a fairly big % of his overall blood supply. That's what I've read, at least.

[Erinz]

Something I had never heard of before is Lotus Birth, where the cord and placenta are left attached until it falls off itself. Might be interesting to see what the reasoning behind that is (I haven't yet since it has no appeal to me).

[Sarahstw]

http://www.cordclamp.com/

warning: lots of info, some kinda not so nice.

[beachcomber]

I'd like to delay clamping if possible when Fane is born. Just to get more of that umbilical blood into him. Since we're not planning to bank and don't anticipate any problems at the delivery, I don't think this request will be an issue with our midwife.

I looked into blood banking and it's astronomically expensive to do it privately here. We can donate his cord blood to one of 4 or 5 public banks but there's no guarantee it would be available to us should we ever need it down the road. Altogether too much bother if you ask me. The only thing that had me interested was that my husband is a Type 1 Diabetic (insulin dependent) and there's been some great research over the past 5 years on i-cell transplantation.

[annettemarie]

Moving to Birth and Beyond

[CrunchyKnitter]

We are doing this, like others have said, so that our baby can get as much of his blood/oxygen back that is in the chord. Apparently that is really, really good for them so I figured why not!

[*MamaJen*]

There was a good Australian study that came out a few months ago showing a lower risk of anemia at six months for aboriginal babies who had delayed cord clamping (ETA: here it is). Basically, the idea is that the placenta continues to transfer blood to the baby for several minutes after birth. If you cut the cord immediately the baby doesn't get all that blood, and it winds up being very large percentage of their blood volume. They may be prone to anemia later on if they start life not getting all the blood that they are evolutionarily designed to receive. The cave men and women did not cut the cord in the first seconds after birth, y'know?
If you're having a hospital birth you may have to fight them to agree to it. Midwives pretty much always delay cord cutting for at least a few minutes, if not an hour or so, until the cord stops pulsing.
Lotus birth is a bit different; it's waiting several days until the cord dries and separates on its own.

[Devaskyla]

There was a good Australian study that came out a few months ago showing a lower risk of anemia at six months for aboriginal babies who had delayed cord clamping (ETA: here it is).

Nice there's a study which confirms the belief I've had for years that ds1's early anemia was probably due to having the cord clamped & cut immediately after he was cut out of me.