Sheriff Swanson! 'Greentown's miracle baby' is slipping...

"Tori M." wrote in message
...
Although I don't think that early cord cutting caused my daughter
immediate
harm, I'm 100% certain it caused her anemia during her first year. Why?
Because all we had to do to fix the anemia was supplement iron for 1
month.
She was never anemic again. So obviously something happened that kept
her
from getting a full, normal supply of iron. Maybe the fact that the cord
was
clamped against my will within seconds of her birth?

Jenrose
Dont you think this would be more common then? The cord was clamped almost
right after Bonnie was born and she has never been anemic.. Most (I wont
say
all because I can not confirm that) of the other babies I know of have not
been anemic.. I would think if there was an epidemic of anemic children
running arround then they would look back to the common cord clamping and
stop.

It depends partly on the position of the baby and whether there is a
contraction in process when the clamp is applied. My daughter was higher
than my uterus and I pushed her out at the end of a contraction. There is no
*other* good explanation for her anemia that I've heard, especially when it
was so easily corrected at 1 year with supplementation which we never had to
repeat past 1 month. Obviously her diet was sufficent to maintain her iron
levels, but not build them (and the bulk of her nutrition was still coming
from breastmilk at 1 year.)

Jenrose

"Jenrose" wrote in message . ..

We had planned to have a delayed cord cutting, but my midwives
recommended against it since I am RH- and my husband is RH+ (and our
daughter is also +).

All the more reason to leave the cord alone!

They didn't do an early cord cutting - it was cut more than 5 minutes
after her birth, though I don't have an exact time. But my
understanding is that delayed cutting can cause problems in our case
because it increases the likelihood of our blood mixing, and allowing
my antibodies into her bloodstream. I know that jaundice is also more
common in + babies of negative mothers as well. I'm not all that
familiar with this stuff though.

I do know that I had a fabulous home birth, and my daughter was
handled in the gentlest way - I really have no complaints. And she was
healthy and never had any anemia (and she had blood test at 18 months
to check it).

Cathy Weeks
Mommy to Kivi Alexis 12/01

"Cathy Weeks" wrote in message
om...
We had planned to have a delayed cord cutting, but my midwives
recommended against it since I am RH- and my husband is RH+ (and our
daughter is also +). However, they did not cut and clamp until my
daughter was breathing on her own and pinked up. And, she still wound
up with jaundice (though not a serious case of it, and a few hours in
a sunny window took care of it).

With my third baby we chose to delay cord cutting, and I'm RH-, hubby's RH+
(all three kids positive, too). Of the three, he was the only one who
didn't get jaundiced. My first was born in the hospital, and the cord was
cut pretty quick, and she was the most jaundiced. The second was born at
home. The cord wasn't cut immediately like it was in the hospital, but I
don't think we waited for the cord to stop pulsing. She was mildly
jaundiced, and it cleared up pretty quickly. Just my lil' anecdote...


--
Joy

Rose 1-30-99
Iris 2-28-01
Spencer 3-12-03

"Cathy Weeks" wrote in message
om...
"Jenrose" wrote in message
. ..

We had planned to have a delayed cord cutting, but my midwives
recommended against it since I am RH- and my husband is RH+ (and our
daughter is also +).

All the more reason to leave the cord alone!

They didn't do an early cord cutting - it was cut more than 5 minutes
after her birth, though I don't have an exact time. But my
understanding is that delayed cutting can cause problems in our case
because it increases the likelihood of our blood mixing,

Nonsense.

Clamping the cord at all stops the placenta from pumping the blood *away*
from your body...where's it going to go? Clamp it, and you've got a bunch of
baby blood unable to flow away from the placenta.

Any messing with the placenta (tugging, pulling at the cord, vigorous
massage before it's delivered) is more likely to cause problems than just
leaving it alone. I believe Michel Odent talks about cord clamping in his
book Birth Reborn--his observation was that only the baby's side should ever
be clamped, that the maternal side should be allowed to drain freely if the
cord was being cut promptly, because clamping the maternal side made the
placenta take longer to deliver.

To reduce risks of blood mixing, I believe the ideal is to leave it all
alone and let the placenta deliver with minimal interference.

Jenrose