Leaving umbilical cord attached for a minute after birth- why would this be beneficial?

[totalfandango]

A midwife I met socially recently advised me to ask for my baby's umbilical cord not to be cut for up to a minute following the birth and something about stem cells. Realised afterwards I'm really not sure what she meant. Does anybody know the pros and cons of doing this?

Allows extra blood, nutrients and oxygen to baby from what I've been led to believe. My midwife was of that opinion and she left mine for a bit after it had stopped pulsing. Will be requesting it again :)

I think it tends to be until it stops pulsing which is normally longer than a minute. It makes sure all the blood and nutrients have passed from the placenta in to the baby.
I left mine for a little bit but I had a short cord and could feel it tugging while holding the baby so asked to get it cut quicker.

Thanks for the info. I guess you just ask before the baby is delivered and its your choice rather than if the hospital usually does this?

Surely the placenta has been passing blood and nutrients to the baby for most of the pregnancy though so what difference is a couple of minutes going to make? Or am I being really thick?

You ask for delayed cord clamping, yes. You can wait for a minute, but to get the full benefits, better to wait for it to go white and stop pulsating.

cord-clamping.com/

dds cord was not clamped until after I had birthed the placenta. :)

I just mentioned at the beginning that i wanted delayed cord clamping and they left it for 5 minutes. It was lovely, had 5 minutes of skin to skin and staring in amazement at DS and he got all that good cord blood.

Then i had the injection and the placenta popped out a minute later.

then i was stitched back together

catlady there can be up to half a pint of blood left in the cord and placenta that your baby could really do with! In addition, the more blood that is pumped out of the placenta the easier the third stage is (pushing the placenta out). It does take longer than a minute for the cord to stop pulsing though - more like 5 - 10.

totalfandango if you want to harvest stem cells then I think you have to cut immediately, as they're in exactly that blood that otherwise the baby would be getting.

Ok thanks, I had not considered the stem cell thing but I will ask the cords to be left longer if it will benefit the baby. Thank you.

Its really good for the baby zuleika no you can still collect the stem cells even if you delay cord clamping, I asked about this recently if you look on the sites of charities to do with this is Anthony Nolan etc they have the info.

Some hospitals can collect stem cells - they'd started asking everyone at St George's by the time dc2 was born last year so I was very happy to donate. They give you a nice thank you card too.

Ten months later they phoned to check dd was still healthy, as they wanted to give her cells to someone.