Shinyshilling - I've copied all the comments from the archives of the midwifery website . Not sure if you can access it if you're not a member?
Right at the end it says about braiding cross stitch threads. HTH
"Rubber bands, 3.5 cms long by 2mm wide, are wound four times round an average size cord: they are considered to be more efficient than tape which may allow leakage: rubber bands may cut through a thick cord. Rubber bands shrink as the cord shrinks." We applied the Spencer Wells forceps 5 cms from the umbilicus and wrapped the elastic band round the cord and forceps 4 times and then providing the elastic seemed tight enough, we removed the clamp.
Dental tape works quite well - and I have no qualms about being sterile. I sterilise my own instruments after use - and store 'clean'. Birth is not a sterile event.
Have been using non-waxed dental floss for years- it seems to be effective, cheap and socially clean. It caused alot of raised eyebrows from the paediatricans at the hospital which led to us giving up using it for hospital births and going back to clamps, but we do lots of home births where we use dental floss. And in fact, now feel like making a stand against the unneccessary medicalisation of cord tying! Everyone get their dental floss out!
I agree - using dental floss works really well. I also know a couple who chose to make their own cord tie, plaited out of horses hair from their own horse. Boiled up lovely and was a very effective tie!
Many of the women I attend prefer not to use the plastic cord clamps and there really is no problem. Messrs Ethicon sell Umbilical cotton tape in a sterile pack rather like a suture packet. I am looking at one as I type. Or the woman can just get some 1/4 inch cotton tape, cut two lengths of about 10 inches and while in early labour boil them in water for about 20 minutes, take them off the boil and leave to cool. Midwife then has two sterile lengths of tape in sterile water.
I have some tape which is produced by ethicon and is intended for tying cords. It's obviously not sterile once opened and used for the first time, but it is clean as it is like a cotton reel in a tube with a snap lid and you pull out as much as you want and cut off the appropriate length - a bit like you do dental floss but as it's tape rather than as thin as floss I would think it's less likely to cut through the cord. I 'inherited' it from a midwife friend (looks like there's enough there to last me and a few midwives after me!) and use it when clients don't want a plastic clamp.
I only got about halfway through mentioning to a midwife last time that I would like to use dental floss instead of a plastic clamp on my second baby's cord, when she said "Oh, we'll just use a cord tie, then" - I think that was what she called it. In the event it was just thin string, just like dental floss. Nobody seemed to find it at all controversial.
If you do want to use something though braided cross-stitch thread in chosen colours is what many couples planning unassisted birth use. Use it wet as it grips the cord tissue better.