Can Clamping the Umbilical Cord Too Soon Be Harmful? 5 Reasons to Wait

In the UK, as in the US, standard medical procedure is to clamp the umbilical cord immediately after the baby is born. A medical expert in the UK has come out against this policy, calling for change. According to Dr. David Hutchon, a retired consultant obstetrician from Memorial Hospital in Darlington, clamping the cord so quickly may put the baby at higher risk for iron deficiency, anemia, and blood loss which can, in extreme circumstances, lead to shock and possibly death.These concerns were published in a paper in the British Medical Journal, in which he also criticizes the British hospital system for dismissing advice from the World Health Organization and International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology, both of which recommend waiting before cutting the cord.

I remember hearing something about this idea before my son's birth and then planning to ask my doctor to wait before clamping the cord. But when the time came, everything happened so fast. The baby was born; the cord was clamped. Those risks sound frightening. But is this really something to worry about?

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I remember hearing something about this idea before my son's birth and planning to ask my doctor to wait before clamping the cord. But when the time came everything happened so fast. The baby was born, the cord was clamped. Those risks sound frightening. But is this really something to worry about?

As usual, it depends on who you ask. Most OBs would probably tell you that there is no benefit to keeping the cord attached for any longer than current practice dictates. According to the U.S. medical community, there is no evidence that cord clamping has anything to do with iron deficiency or blood loss. For one thing, there has been little medical research into this area. Cord clamping has been a fairly ubiquitous practice in modern western obstetrics, so they have few firsthand examples of the other way of doing things.

But in the midwifery community, it is common to leave the cord to pulse until it stops by itself. To discover the five reasons why midwives delay cord clamping, head to Being Pregnant.

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