Delay Cord Clamping - Your Baby Deserves Their Blood!
The techno-medical management of birth is pervasive. I struggle to understand the origination of some obstetrical interventions, such as the immediate (or quick) clamping and cutting of the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord develops between 3.5 and 8 gestational weeks and sustains the baby throughout the pregnancy and even in the minutes after birth by transferring nutrients and oxygen to the fetus from the placenta and carrying fetal waste away. The transfer of nutrient rich and oxygenated blood continues after birth and is important for all babies to receive, but particularly important for babies that are slow to start breathing on their own. I recently watched a youtube video of a Grand Rounds lecture from M.D. Nicholas Fogelson ( AcademicOB/GYN ) about delayed cord clamping and the importance of this as a standard of practice in medicine. He gives an excellent presentation and discusses several large well-executed research studies in which the evidence for delayed cord clamping is...