black umbilical cord

[louisedun]

My dd was born 36 wk due to pre-eclampsia and fetal distress, when she was born her umbilical cord was black and very smelly-does anyone know a reason for this????
She is now 3.9 and does have some health probs, we are thinkin of another baby but was wonderin if this cord thing cud happen again and if it is dangerous x
Any suggestions

I think it can sometimes indicate that the placenta was starting to fail, there are so many reasons for this though and there's no way of knowing. Once the medics are aware they will keep a close eye on you just incase anything similar happens again but it sounds like they were really on the ball last time.

not at all on the ball, they only saw it was black when she was born and they didnt even write it in my notes, cos i paid for a copy of them!

There's little chance they would have known what it looked like before the birth, they would have looked at your clinical signs and made a judgment. It was a very good one though. Were you induced/c-section?

emergency c-section cos of dd heart rate dipping x had monitoring on cos of pre-ecam bp was 170 over 125 at one point so they had little choice really but c-section, yes i agree in that respect was the correct choice

Oh, what a horrid time for you . They are still doing studies on the causes of pre-eclampsia so I'm not up to date with the current research so you may be better having a chat with your GP. They can do weekly scans to determine the efficiency of the placenta and umbilical cord which will help you, it sounds like it was on the verge of not working and had started to disintegrate in a big way. There's nothing to say it will happen again but if you have regular scans they will be able to pick up any problems. It may be that the placenta may have had clots in it, medication can help so I think your best bet is a chat with your GP first of all. There are so many questions and so many possible causes to what happened to you but I don't think anyone will really know. Pop and see your GP and talk it over with them. If you and your dh/dp wish to try again, the team caring for you will know your history and will take extra special care of you throughout.

You are very lucky to have the child you both have now. Someone's watching over you.