Cord blood

The other day Grandma Curran mentioned cord blood banking, and it reminded me to get back on my high horse about birthing. Hehe. So if you are sick of hearing about my opinion on birth, blame my Mother-In-Law. (just kidding!)

The answer to the original question is that we will not be doing cord blood banking, for a couple of reasons. One is that it is not an option for us, as we'll be birthing at home. This is only available to people who birth at hospitals.

Second, and more importantly to me (and I'm sure T.J., if I made him read up on it), is the benefits of delayed cord clamping until the umbilical cord stops pulsing. In hospitals (unless you direct otherwise and they actually listen to you), the cord is clamped immediately, but this effectively reduces the amount of blood that the baby gets, and can cause low iron in babies (see this article, for example) and oxygen deficiency, especially if the baby is slow to breathe on its own.

Iron deficiency is something that "they" are often worried about anyway, and can even lead to pressure for a woman to supplement with formula - some proclaim that breastmilk is "deficient" because it is low in iron. It is true that there is less iron in breast milk, but it is better absorbed than from formula, so beware of people who tell you this!

Here are some reasons to delay cord cutting, from a Midwife in California:

• Leaving the cord to pulse does "no harm" and therefore should be encouraged. If you can think about what Nature intended, our ancestors way back before scissors and clamps were invented must have had to wait to deal with the cord/placenta until the placenta was birthed.
  
• Leaving the cord to pulse slows down the "fire drill" energy that many birth attendants get into after the baby is born. Leaving off the busyness of midwifery for a half hour allows the mother and baby undisturbed bonding time without a "project " going on i.e. the cord cutting instructions, explanations, jokes, etc. The father, too , is undisturbed and able to enjoy this "high" time without focusing on a job at hand.
• Educator Joseph Chilton Pierce in his book "Magical Child" makes ref to studies that were done on primates who gave birth in captivity and had early cord clamping. Autopsies of the primates showed that early cord clamping produced unusual lesions in the brains of the animals. These same lesions were also found in the brains of human infants when autopsied.
  

I swear I've seen some reasons *for* early cord cutting, but I can't find any on google today from a pro-cutting source! I did find a list of reasons, but it's probably a bit biased (it's from someone against early clamping). Here it is though:

• Belief that the oxygen deficit is what causes the baby to start breathing. In truth, nature designed a system for insuring a smooth transition from womb life to breathing. The blood passing between the baby and the placenta carries oxygen to the newborn (possibly even after the placenta has detached and delivered!) This system is especially useful to the distressed newborn.
• Belief that delayed clamping will cause placental over-transfusion.
  
• Delayed clamping results in higher incidence of jaundice. Many midwives who delay clamping have found this is simply not true, and in fact see a dramatically lower incidence of jaundice when cord clamping is delayed. Medical people think that this goes against the physiology of jaundice.... but other experts believe that delayed clamping is precisely why the incidence is lower.
• Convenience. Whisking a baby away to be cleaned, weighed and 'checked' following most hospital practices is easier done when the baby is no longer attached to the mother. A baby can be put on the mother's belly immediately following the birth or wrapped in a blanket and held by the mother providing the cord is long enough, until the placenta is delivered and the cord stops pulsating. The reality of this happening in a hospital birth is questionable.
• If a baby is having complications, a doctor can work on the baby easier by cutting the cord and resuscitating the child. It is precisely in the most dire emergencies that cutting the cord is the worst of all possible things you can do.

If for some reason you cannot delay cord cutting, I would urge you to see if your hospital has a cord blood donation bank. Banking it privately is very $$$, but donating it is a pretty cool idea, and could lead to medical advancement. But if you can delay, I would do that - if the cord blood is valuable in the future, just think how valuable it is to your baby at birth!