Bridget's Pregnancy Blog

Another of the decisions I’ve had to make for my birth plan was how to handle the umbilical cord. Now, you’d think that this wouldn’t require too much thought. After all, in movies they just cut the cord after birth and that’s about all the involvement anyone has with their umbilical cord.

But nowadays, there are apparently decisions to be made.

The two main things listed on my humongous birth plan questionnaire having to do with the umbilical cord were whether I wanted to bank the umbilical cord blood and whether I wanted delayed cord clamping, so I looked into both of these options.

Basically, umbilical cord banking is saving the baby’s blood from the umbilical cord for possible future use. Since this blood is rich in stem cells, it can potentially be used to treat diseases that the child may have later in life.

Delayed cord clamping is waiting until the cord has stopped pulsating before clamping and cutting it, usually about 5-20 minutes after birth. The benefits of this seem to be that the baby is less likely to develop things like anemia right after birth, since the blood that is in the cord goes back into the baby as it pulses.

While both of these things sound like good ideas, it usually comes down to a choice between the two. Because cord blood banking is collecting stem cells, they need as much blood as they can get, so they have to cut it immediately to ensure getting enough cells. If you choose to delay the cord clamping, the blood that could be banked is back in the baby, so the likelihood of getting enough cells for banking is low.

In the end, I’ve decided to go with the delayed cord clamping. After giving it a lot of thought, I think for us this is the best decision. The risk of diseases that would need umbilical cord blood is fairly low and the difficulty and expense of getting the cord blood from China if we should need it in the future (since we plan on eventually moving somewhere else) would probably outweigh the possible benefit for us.

On the other hand, delayed cord clamping is something easy for us to do and would benefit the baby right away by providing him with extra blood that might give him a boost in health at the start of his life. Since I’ve had some issues during this pregnancy with blood sugar levels and iron levels, this might make the difference between him needing some supplements after birth or not. So we’re going with the delayed cord clamping option.

I’d encourage every mom-to-be to look into both of these options as possibilities for dealing with the umbilical cord blood, since some hospitals and birth centers might not mention these things, but they might be something you could include on your birth plan.