when is cord around neck a problem?

[anonymommy]

The other thread has me wondering, when is a nuchal cord or two a problem? I thought it generally wasn't, after all, isn't there one in most births? Both my homebirth baby and my uc baby had a nuchal cord -- don't know about the hb one but the uc had it wrapped twice. He came out white, but I think that was placental quitting time not cord compression from what I've discussed with midwife friends.

[mehndi mama]

I think it only becomes seriously dangerous when the baby's body becomes entangled, or if the cord is too short to allow proper descent. No real way of knowing aboutr either, save for heart-tone monitoing, or just plain intuition.

[mwherbs]

too short to allow decent, or causes a sheering of the placenta to allow decent, when there is little to no warton's jelly in the cord in this case even a non wrap can be a problem, when there is some unusual cord attachment to the placenta that the wrap causes a sheer/tearing away of the cord- just recently heard about one recently where everyone was ok but whew.
Lots of times there is complexity to this because usually many wraps are in long cords so there is also a chance of true knot in a long cord mixed with wraps making it too tight...
Probably the biggest problem with nuchal cords is care provider management. So after the last thread and what I said about it I looked up nuchal cord because I wanted to see the birth numbers unfortunately I found some studies linking some problems with cord wraps that were 3 turns or more even in long term outcomes-- I am not entirely sure what this means and would have to get the complete studies to analyze the info--- it could still be how they are handled very quick clamp and cut more hands on management at delivery, instrumental delivery... Or could be something deeper who knows which comes first lots of movement is thought to make longer cords and this increases the likelihood of more wraps but maybe there is some differences in babies who move more than average.....I don't know and this is probably too much speculation..

[applejuice]

I do know one thing...a cord wrapped around the neck cannot become prolapsed!