Umbilical cord question

[kimberlylibby]

Heya! I'm from the August board, but by far the earliest August mom to deliver (July 18).

My dd is 16 days old now and her cord is funky looking. My other daughter's cord fell off at 10 days pp.

Katie's is really getting pretty gross, so I finally started using alcohol (we'd been doing nothing) and I don't know what's up. I was too sick after Libby's birth to even pay attention to what her cord looked like, so this might be normal....

Anyway, is there any way some of you could take a pic of what it looks like "under" the black crusty thing on your baby's cord? I want to know what it's SUPPOSED to look like. Katie's is sort of healing-pink colored on the edges and then has green stringy thingies that connect to the top and then solid "stump" in the middle that hasn't dried at all.

Does that make sense-ish?

Kimberly

[sweet tea]

I don't have my july baby yet...but maybe goldenseal would help on the cord.
with #1 we followed our ped's advice and used alcohol 3x daily- that cord stayed on for 6 weeks!

no alcohol for us this time

[Threefold]

my dd's fell off last night at 6 days old! My ds's lasted nearly 2 weeks. We used alcohol on dd beginning 4 days old b/c it looked a bit red/inflammed. I was shocked when it fell off! It has a little tongue looking thing in the middle, but looks healthy and dry all over. The cord, and my ds's too, looked like jerky as it dried. I don't recall anything green at all, but as long as the surrounding skin is healthy and not oozing any pus, sounds like the cord is fine. One baby book I have say the cord falls off at 3 weeks old, so I guess there's a wide range of normal.

[midwifer]

This time, I did not use alcohol and my son's cord was a bit funky as it dried...pretty stinky too. It fell off fine and healed well. Try to keep it dry, no submersion baths, and if you start to use alcohol, keep using it, if not, I bet it will fall off soon. The only real worry is if you start to see a spreading redness on the abdomen, a sign of infection, they are really rare, but they are dangerous.

[kris1225]

we've used goldenseal this time and at 4 days old, Quinn's cord is hanging by a thread. Amazing! We used alcohol last time and Zoie's was still on at her 1 month check up.