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Cutting Umbilical Cord Early Eliminates Stem Cells
GeneralSoh writes "Delaying clamping the umbilical cord at birth may have far-reaching benefits for your baby, according to researchers at the University of South Florida's Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair — and should be delayed for at least a few minutes longer after birth. This new recommendation published in the most recent Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (14:3) notes that delaying clamping the umbilical cord allows more umbilical cord blood and crucial stem cells to transfer from mama to baby."
When my son was born a few years ago, the Doc didn't clamp the cord very quickly. Our baby also ended with a pretty decent case of jaundice and had to be under the "bili lights" for a few days, extending our hospital stay.
This can sometimes happen when the baby gets a big dose of red blood cells because he's a lot lower than the placenta (gravity) or because the cord isn't clamped very quickly. All those red blood cells die in a day or two, baby cannot break down/metabolize the dead RBCs correctly, and POOF, jaundice.
Just be careful. Jaundice can cause pleasant things like brain damage in neonates (due to immature blood/brain barrier).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilirubin#Toxicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernicterus
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Yes, there is. It will stop pulsing. I've heard of cases where the baby was having trouble breathing, so they kept it going for half an hour until the breathing was right. As long as the cord is pulsing, the baby is still getting everything he needs through it. In most cases, the cord will shut down on its own in a minute or two.
There are quite a few things relating to circulation that don't happen until a few moments after birth (i.e. blood pressure, heart rate, heart valve changes). Perhaps a stem cell transference has something to do with that...
There are several valves in the embryo's heart (such as the foramen ovale) which allows a lot of the blood passing through the heart to avoid the lungs. A lot of the blood coming into the heart before birth is oxygenated from the umbilical cord, so it can get pumped right out without going to the lungs.
When the lungs become functional, pressure changes cause at least some of those valves to close immediately, so that the blood is now forced to go through the lungs before getting pumped back out to the body. These valves should close almost immediately to avoid deoxygenated blood being pumped out. That's really too quick to be directly affected by the stem cells. They -might- have something to do with later changes, where those valves permanently fuse shut, I don't know.
could it be because our doctors have the skill to allow babies to be born that would be stillborn elsewhere, but then subsequently die from complications? This is a misleading statistic that doesn't take the whole picture into account.
And I held and cut my own kids' cords - home births both of them, and the midwife said to leave clamping & cutting until the cord stopped pulsing, so I had to hold the cord until I felt it stop.
Surprisingly tough, too - it's like a rope of three blood vessels strengthened with gristle.
"Probably" just doesn't cut it. While delayed clamping of the umbilical cord may have a number of benefits to premature newborns, there are several other reasons for neonatal anemia (and hence, your need for a transfusion of RBCs) that have nothing to do with the timing of clamping.
Also, several of the reasons for prematurity may cause birth with low Apgar scores. When a baby is born with low/zero heart rate or does not breathe soon after delivery, keeping it attached to the placenta is not going to give you better results than prompt clamping and institution of proper resuscitation.
Please try to exercise more common sense when you leave your opinions in a public forum. Oh, forget that last sentence, this is slashdot, after all.