The cord clamping thread - add your thoughts

[~Megan~]

Topic #3 is Cord Clamping. Until reading this website I had no idea how important it was to delay clamping.

I knew that delaying was a good idea but had didn't realize that its really essential.

Have you talked with your provider about this? Have you decided what you will do about the cord?

Any other thoughts on cord after care?

[Love_My_Babies]

My new provider's policy is awesome. They wait until the cord stops pulsing. Then, they clamp the cord with their fingers and run the last few drops of blood in the cord into the baby's body. After that is when they actually clamp and then cut it.

[deliarose]

We will wait until it stops pulsing. I put that on my birth plan last time and it was fine.

[NormaJean13]

It's on my birth plan too. I'm going to pay attention to what's going on and have instructed DH to do the same.

[naturegirl]

We delayed cord clamping until it stopped pulsating with ds ad will do the same with this one. It is a very important point to us.

[hempmama]

We are donating the cord blood, so it will be clamped. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it I know of several children who've been affected by diseases which can be helped by cord blood, so I feel really, really drawn to help in this way. I couldn't not, at this point.

[maryeb]

We decided to wait until the placenta is out before clamping. Last time we waited until it stopped pulsing.

[~Megan~]

Originally Posted by hempmama

We are donating the cord blood, so it will be clamped. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it I know of several children who've been affected by diseases which can be helped by cord blood, so I feel really, really drawn to help in this way. I couldn't not, at this point.

Even if you are donating you should still be able to delay for 20 minutes or so which will help your baby.

[megsy]

I mentioned it to my OB and he said, "I don't ever clamp the cord before it stops pulsing, why would you think otherwise?"

Oh. LOL

[desertpenguin]

with my ds i told my OB that i wanted to wait to cut the cord until it was no longer working...i shouldn't have muddled my words and been more stern about it, they cut it after about a minute and whisked ds away to give him oxygen (which in retrospect i can say was totally unnecessary.) this time we will be waiting until the placenta is delivered and we will burn the cord rather than cutting it. not planning on doing any cord care though. from everything i have read it falls off quicker if you don't do anything. last time we did the rubbing alcohol and i thought it was never going to fall off.

[holothuroidea]

I told my midwife that I would like the cord attached until it becomes an inconvenience to me or the baby. She said that's pretty much how she does it, so we are on the same page.

If there's no reason to cut it then why bother? However, if the cord is very short or I need to have the placenta removed ASAP or something, then it's time to clamp and cut.

[robertandenith]

We'll wait until the placenta is out before clamping.

[LilacMama]

Does anyone have a link to a good explanation of the anatomy/physiology of this? Or is someone able to explain it? I'm having trouble understanding it. I thought it was a circular pattern of um, circulation. So, why is the blood going to the baby and not leaving the baby after birth to go back to the placenta (since obviously, it was leaving the baby through the fetal arteries in the cord PRIOR to birth)? Why does the baby get to "keep it all" after birth?

I've had a doctor tell me that if the baby is held above the level of the placenta that the baby will actually lose blood due to gravity, but that didn't make sense to me really since it is a pulsating system that would be able to work against gravity....

Okay, sorry if I'm babbling. I've just having trouble picturing how it all works.

[sapphire_chan]

Well, isn't the return path is a single vein while the paths into the baby are a couple arteries? So maybe that's why the return path closes up sooner.

Also hoping someone has a link to a physiological analysis. I know that babies don't bleed out in lotus births, so it clearly works to not clamp at all, but it'd be nice to know why it works.

[River7]

thanks, hempmama

Just wanted to give a shout out of thanks to Hempmama for donating her child's cord blood. This is obviously a very personal decision, and I fully understand other people's choices, but as someone with a brother who suffers from Acute Leukemia, and whose only option, if he relapses, is a cord blood transplant, I am so thankful for cord blood donation. I just had my first child and we collected his cb for private banking (specifically for my brother, should he need it). If my brother did not have leukemia, I would have donated to a public bank.

I'm glad that someone here pointed out that one can let their child get the benefits of the cord pulsing out and can still donate to a CB bank. That is something I was unaware of, but it's a really important point as it might encourage more people to donate cb without feeling like they are denying their baby all the benefits of the cord pulsing out.

Thanks again, Hempmama.

R.

[treehugginhippie]

Originally Posted by maryeb

We decided to wait until the placenta is out before clamping. Last time we waited until it stopped pulsing.

What is the difference between waiting until it stops pulsing and waiting until the placenta is out?

[Pyrodjm]

We waited until after I deivered the placenta to clamp and cut the cord. My midwife and I felt the cord before the placenta came out and it had already stopped pulsating.

We were too busy oohing and ahhing over the baby to worry much about the cord right away anyway.

[mama_at_home]

We waited an hour to clamp the cord, well after the placenta was delivered and until the cord was totally empty.

[Mamatolea]

We waited until the placenta was delivered and then she drew blood for labs from the cord and then clamped. His stump fell off in like 4 days.

[robertandenith]

Originally Posted by gemelos

We waited an hour to clamp the cord, well after the placenta was delivered and until the cord was totally empty.

That's how we did it! We didn't use a clamp though, we used a very thick dental floss like material. His stump fell off 3 days later