FLICKR, DAVE HERHOLZWhen a baby comes out of its mother, it is still attached to her via the umbilical cord and still hooked into her blood supply. Ordinarily, the umbilical cord is clamped and then cut within the first minute after birth. But a new paper published in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews last week (July 11) indicates that babies may fare better if the cord is cut a few minutes later, allowing more blood to flow from mother to child.
“A more liberal approach to delaying clamping of the umbilical cord in healthy term infants appears to be warranted, particularly in light of growing evidence that delayed cord clamping increases early hemoglobin concentrations and iron stores in infants,” the authors wrote in their review.
The researchers looked at data from 15 trials that analyzed how 3,911 mother-infant pairs fared after delivery. The babies’ cords were generally clamped between 1 and 3 minutes after birth. The researchers found that regardless of when clamping occurred, the mothers had around the same risk of dangerous postpartum hemorrhage.
Meanwhile, babies whose cords were cut slightly later tended to have higher birth weights and higher hemoglobin concentrations directly after birth, and improved iron levels for up to half a year ...
