On today’s episode we talk about the difference between delayed cord clamping and optimal cord closure. You will have a better understanding of the difference between the two and also was to separate the cord from baby.
Join as we discuss:
Resources Mentioned:
Guide to out of Hospital Birth use code PODCAST20 for 20% off!
Looking for more? Check us out on Youtube & visit the blog for show notes and transcript
Connect:
Into the Labyrinth Birth Services
Brigitte- Instagram & Facebook
Free downloads:
Holistic Birth and Beyond Freebies
Into the Labyrinth Birth Playlist
Holistic Birth & Beyond’s Spotify
Looking for more? Check us out on Youtube & visit the blog for show notes and transcript
Connect:
Holistic Birth and Beyond, LLC
Into the Labyrinth Birth Services
Brigitte- Instagram & Facebook
On today’s episode we talk about the difference between delayed cord clamping and optimal cord closure. You will have a better understanding of the difference between the two and also was to separate the cord from baby.
Join as we discuss:
Resources Mentioned:
Guide to out of Hospital Birth use code PODCAST20 for 20% off!
Looking for more? Check us out on Youtube & visit the blog for show notes and transcript
Connect:
Into the Labyrinth Birth Services
Brigitte- Instagram & Facebook
Free downloads:
Holistic Birth and Beyond Freebies
Into the Labyrinth Birth Playlist
Holistic Birth & Beyond’s Spotify
Looking for more? Check us out on Youtube & visit the blog for show notes and transcript
Connect:
Holistic Birth and Beyond, LLC
Into the Labyrinth Birth Services
Brigitte- Instagram & Facebook
Brigitte 0:16
Welcome back to the Holistic Birth Podcast. This is episode 17 and today we're going to be talking about delayed cord clamping versus optimal cord closure.
Allison 0:57
So delayed cord clamping is the practice of allowing the umbilical cord to continue to deliver the rest of the blood to baby that's stored within the placenta. With delayed cord clamping, that's the terminology you might find with a lot of providers or birth settings. The standard for like amount of time, that's always like the question is, well, how long? How long do we delay clamping? We're just going to say several times, it's very beneficial to keep that cord attached and flowing. There's no rush, typically, which we'll get into the scenarios and everything but ACOG recommends at least 30 to 60 seconds. Minimum. The World Health Organization recommends the court shouldn't be clamped earlier than one minutes or at least a minute. And then the American College of nurse midwives says five minutes after birth and full term infants infants, which is 37 weeks, but really, there's a lot of benefits. And yes, yeah. So that's kind of the the overview of delayed cord clamping the time, we'll talk about the benefits. But can maybe you if you want to share Brigitte what how is that different from optimal cord closure, that term?
Brigitte 2:15
Yeah, so optimal cord closure is basically waiting until the cord is white. So no pulsing, you won't see any, you know, blood flow going to the baby. And so yeah, waiting till it's completely white. And you can actually birth a placenta afterwards, leave that attached even. Because sometimes, you know, just all depends, there's no like, set time that it's done. It's done when it's done. So waiting to like quarters, white is just making sure that your baby is getting all the blood and stem cells, all that good stuff that they really need to prevent, like anemia and stuff like that. So we'll get more into detail on that. It does not increase the risk of postpartum hemorrhage. And the benefits are again, incredible.
Allison 2:58
Because truthfully this blood that we're clamping sometimes too early is baby's blood.
Brigitte 3:08
Yes, baby's!
Allison 3:08
Yes, it is there's so the benefits of optimal cord closure of delaying that clamping and cutting. Waiting for white ideally, is that we see increased hemoglobin levels at birth, the iron stores are increased when in baby which obviously can also help like long, like long term like six months down the road even Yeah, it helps baby with like both physical and emotional development and growth. It is packed with stem cells and that helps with baby's immune system and their growth as well. And it also can still be done with a cesarean birth I even had a client actually who, I think I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast already, but she wanted the placenta to be birthed with baby and then like they just waited with baby over on the or table. Yeah, waited for the placenta. Placenta was birth and then they both were brought over to the warmer and continued delay like full really good delayed cord clamping several minutes, several minutes. The cord was white dad cut did the final cut. It was like good. Absolutely. There are better outcomes for even premature babies to improve for improves that transition circulation. It decreases the need for a blood transfusion. That's pretty incredible. And even those extra few minutes can really help with a neuro development for for your child several years later, so yeah, pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah, so that's kind of the overview of the benefits of it. Obviously, it sounds fantastic and most of the time, but the majority of the time it is and it's like it's great. A lot of things can work around it. There's also something called a lotus birth, which we sort of hinted at already. I'm going to share about that
Brigitte 5:01
Brigitte. Yeah, yeah. So like I said before, that's typically when the placenta is birthed. And again, the cord is still attached. And basically you just wait for the cord to fall off on its own. So you leave it attached to the placenta for I think it takes about three days or so maybe last. But yeah, just dries up and detaches on its own. Yeah. So yeah, Lotus births are pretty cool on they're absolutely fine to do.
Allison 5:27
It's pretty, it's pretty interesting. If you do, if you did want to do something with your placenta, like Placenta Encapsulation, usually, it's like contraindicated because yeah, that makes storage of the placenta. But if you're not planning on doing anything with your placenta, where you're consuming it, then yeah, Lotus birth is pretty cool. Just waiting for, waiting for that to disconnect really on its own. I've seen people where they do like a variation where it's important to them, that baby and the placenta are existing outside of the womb together for X amount of time, and then maybe then do some sort of Yeah, clamping burning whatever. Yeah, maybe we should talk about that.
Brigitte 6:06
So again, waiting until the cord is white. And, you know, again, the placenta is still attached to the baby and the cord. There's definitely like different methods of doing it. So basically, you and your partner or another family member, if it's another child, you can burn the cord with a candle. A lot of people like to use like beeswax candles, because they're obviously more natural. But you can buy like these really cool little boxes that have like little cut out grooves and each you know, side of them and you just hold the candle that way, you know, protects you from you know, getting burned or wax on you. And you just put the cord you know across the box and then put the two candles if you're watching the video, I'm kind of showing between the put on the two candles like across, in over the in obviously the flame over the umbilical cord and you just wait there until it burns. Of course, this doesn't hurt the baby or anything like that. And, you know, keep it a pretty safe distance. That way, there's no like heat, you know, causing problems. It takes about like 1015 minutes for it to burn. So some people are kind of surprised that it takes so long but it's just like a really nice way of like honoring the placenta and just a nice slow way and gentle way of detaching the baby from the placenta. So it's just a very symbolic nice thing to do. Because the placenta is where the baby live for, you know, the birthing year and give her supplied all those nutrients and was the baby's home for a while. So it's just a really nice way to kind of honor that.
Allison 7:37
So we'll send does really like an underrated organ. It really is. So cool. Yeah, so cool. But there is I mean, you don't have to, you know, eat it raw. Like there are other ways to honor it and say like that was that was pretty amazing. Everything that I did, yeah, I've had people that like have frozen their placenta, and they're not quite sure what to do about it. And then they come to me with it after and they're like, I want to do like a placenta print. Like there's a lot you can do. Yeah, with a center, which we'll talk about a later episode. But yeah, there's really like a lot of beauty to be able to have that symbolism that slow kind of separation. Yeah,
Brigitte 8:12
I did have a question for you about the placenta waiting for. Like after it's out how long is the period of time that it's like no longer able to be ingested?
Allison 8:21
Four hours. It can be time for like up to four hours. And then ideally, it's put on ice in the fridge. If you're not going to do anything with it consumption wise for like, four to five days, then it's best to just freeze it. And then following it right before you're about to do something with it. But yeah, that's kind of the thing. It doesn't have to go right on ice immediately. So you do have some time.
Brigitte 8:45
But yeah, cool. And there's option of burying your placenta, too. But yeah, I'm we're getting into placenta stuff now.
Allison 8:52
The other end of the umbilical cord. So in most scenarios, you certainly can wait for white. And you can do your skin to skin time, as long as you want. It's really good to kind of also kind of be prepared for which scenarios might prevent it from being that, it might prevent it from being a priority. So obviously, the benefits are fantastic and very supportive for I guess the reason why we want to really just delay that as long as possible and waiting for white. But if for some reason, one of these situations might come up, you might not be able to do the Lotus birth, the burning, anything extended like that. And in theory, you might not even get to do like that. One five, whatever however, the minutes of it, it might just be like 30 seconds or something. So in the scenarios that I kind of want to bring up are in the case of like hemorrhaging, for whatever reason, or if there's like a placenta abruption or placenta previa. Usually there needs to be a little bit more involvement In hands on care from the staff, sometimes you might be overwhelmed. So you actually might want to hand baby to your partner because you're trying to focus as well. So if there's anything like that, where your care needs to be very immediate for you, and they need to kind of, like, get in the space type of thing. Handing baby to your partner and they can do skin to skin or whoever. That can be really helpful as, as like some sort of comfort, I guess. And then also if baby is needing immediate like resuscitation. That's usually the main thing that the providers who are maybe it wasn't like really common back in the day when they did their training. Usually, our understanding is there's not really been a lot of like, evidence for why we did clamping so early, it just was something that became common practice, I think to just to fly to fly through that process and get on to the next thing. But we've really, everyone's all the organization's have really understood like, yeah, we do want to delay it. And I think there's different schools of thought on like, how long to delay it. But yeah, if for some reason baby is needing resuscitation, or any respiratory support, usually, they would recommend clamping and cutting, bringing baby to the infant warmer nearby, which is usually in the same room, where they then can have like their tools to support that resuscitation or whatever protocol they need. Sometimes there are very easy ways to bring over whatever is needed. So if, if you, if baby didn't need a little suction or something from like a bulb syringe, okay, they can bring that to you. But if for some reason they did need something more advanced than the benefits of clamping and cutting early to go and help baby with that, obviously, would outweigh the other benefits of delaying and optimal course.
Brigitte 11:53
Yeah, and sometimes the baby, you know, comes out in the cords short. So it's, you know, obviously, the baby on your tummy is still okay. You know, it's really some, you know, some moms really want the baby like up on their chest immediately. So, you know, do what you feel is best for you obviously, of course, you know, delaying or having the optimal cord closure is ideal. But if you're just like really struggling with that short cord, you can of course have it cut yes soon, too.
Allison 12:20
But if you're wanting to move on to nursing, and you're like, Okay, I'm gonna get this kid up to like to my chest or something like that could be like when you decide as well.
Brigitte 12:29
And if you can wait till you know, your placenta is out, then that way you can then bring your baby up to you can do that. Yeah. So there's there's options there, of course. And yeah, so the other thing, too, is if you plan on doing like any cord banking for, you know, future medical use or anything like that, they'll if you wait, obviously for optimal foreclosure, there's not going to be out there. So as as much Yeah, so just something to think about there, too. If, you know, they, you want to do that sort of thing. But most of the time, yeah, you can continue to do skin to skin and the scalp, the staff can work with you, in around you getting the baby's vital signs, offering medications, you know, doing all those kinds of things, whatever might be going on, they can still do those things, you know, with allowing the cord to do its optimal thing.
Allison 13:18
And I've seen it it's I think we're lucky at some of the hospitals around us. Yeah, do like this. It is standard of care. They're not in a rush anymore. And yeah, I've been in other areas where it's, it's, it's still hard to, they might say it's standard, but they'll kind of clamp and cut it after 15 seconds or 30. There have been some studies done to about like about the timeframe. A lot of the blood does get into the baby back to the baby, I think by like one to two minutes or something like that. Yeah. But if you really allowed that delay, at least till five minutes, the chance of I think it's a third percent of the blood that can be left behind, that gets to continue to baby. So if you clamp it right at birth, or kind of like 3060 seconds maximum, it's possible that a third could be left behind. Right. Yeah. And I've also heard some providers, which we were just talking about before. Yep. Before we have to record was that some providers will say, like, the benefits are kind of done now. Or I've heard someone say, well, there's kind of this back and forth. So really, there's like no point anymore. There is a give and take between baby in the court and the placenta with the way that the blood is circulating. But at the end of that time, that blood is going to end up with baby. So exactly. It's not harming you or baby to continue that process. And so there's obviously a lot of benefits for waiting for white and you can definitely advocate for your baby's blood to be returned fully to them. Which obviously would help with all those nice benefits and you can definitely turn to your partner, your doula or even your nurse if you I would suggest this nurse to like it, that's a really big priority. They'll they'll support you and they'll try it. They'll do everything they can to be like, Oh, wait, don't don't clamp that yet. You know? Yeah, we want to wait longer.
Brigitte 15:11
Yeah, I've had a client specifically say like, on their, their birth plan. Like I want my doula to tell me when or say when it's okay to you know, because it's like the partners like they're you're there in the moment and they're focusing on their values being born.
Allison 15:24
So doing skin to skin it's sometimes hard to like, look down. You can't really see. So it's okay to turn to like your partner, your doula your nurse just be like, by the way is, yeah, well, what's the status first? That's, that's something I try to help train. I guess my, my, the partners that I work with, though, if we were talking about like, Oh, you're gonna cut the cord? For some people the blood they're gonna wait to be you know, it's gonna be a spur of the moment thing. Yeah. But usually, it's like if they know that delayed cord clamping or optimal cord closure is important to them that it's kind of like this default of Okay, are you going to be ready to cut the cord? Or do you want to cut the cord? The partner could immediately say, Well, is it done pulsing, do like, let's not clamp until it's done pulsing just as an immediate thing. And you visually see what it looks like when? Right at birth. And then several minutes later, if you go honestly, you could Google some pictures of like the umbilical cord and try to understand like, you can see when it's full. But yeah, there's a big difference versus like the white. And I do plan to do a social media posts related to this episode that will kind of compare. We want you to help, like, it's good to help know, like, what to look for.
Brigitte 16:36
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we'll also link like the Lotus birth and the candle burning. So people that are interested in that they can have resources to that. So yeah, cool. Great. All right. That's it. I think that's it.
Allison 16:47
Let us know if you have any questions are all always here for you at any time. Hope you have a good rest of your day. And we'll talk to you later.
Brigitte 16:54
Yeah, see you next time. Thanks. Bye!