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It is not a substitute for professional health advice. Welcome everyone, I'm Bridget Maloney and today we're going to do a quick kick and it's going to be about delayed cord clamping. Back in twenty twenty we recorded episode thirty seven all about the umbilical cord. We still get questions about delayed cord clamping, so this quick kick we're going to talk about what it is and what to expect. When we recorded the EPP four years ago, delayed cord clamping was
becoming routine for vaginal births and most caesarean sections. You can still jump onto Google and see people saying that doctors are against delayed cord clamping and that as a birthing mum you have to advocate for this. However, delayed cord clamping is now recommended by professational bodies like the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists or RANSKOG and the World Health Organization. What isn't yet
routine practice is delayed cord clamping in premiature births. Previously the standard practice for premier babies was to clamp the umbilical cord immediately after birth so the baby could be dried, wrapped,
and if necessary, resuscitated with ease. Two Australian studies have shown that delaying cord clamping for one to two minutes and that's all it takes for a premature baby and keeping particular care to keep the baby warm can increase the chance of survival of the premie shortly after birth. There needs to be further research for how best to do this with the sickest of premature babies. These are
the ones that are born really early. But this is a change of practice that has slowly been reflected in obstetric guidelines. As you're listening to this quick kick, it might be worthwhile to remember that in non premature births, there are still some situations where delayed cord clamping is not routine, and that is is if there's an issue with the placenta, or the court or mum needs immediate attention because of a postpartum hemorrhage, or in some cases
where the baby needs resuscitation. We love going back to old apps and picking out these quick kicks, so let's do that. Now and here what doctor pat has to say about delayed cord climbing.
The benefits are probably something we're just starting to learn more about now.
Yeah, I've read something. I've got the stats are wrong, but it can have that baby's iron stores for the first few months of flight.
Yeah, more iron, more blood volume. Is a fair bit of volume in that because it's not that much blood and newborn baby anyway, So what's sitting in the cord is actually a.
Useful the percentage of the baby's blood.
And then exactly the benefit of the stem cells watch this space. Yeah, So it's easy to do, and really the only scenario where it really can't theoretically be done is if the parents wish to donate or collect the cord blood for storage.
Yeah. That was my next question, because.
You can't elp get into the baby and storage. Yeah, it's one or the other. Yeah, so that's a problem. And then the other scenario that makes it difficulty is
if there's some other sort of emergency going on. So four example of thormans having a postpartum hemorrhage, then the first thing you want to do to get that hemorage under controls to get the percenter out yes, and that's difficult to do with baby still attached, So you might clamp and cut the cord forg go the benefits of the delayed cord clamp and then put traction on the
remaining bit of the court teble percenta come out. And that's a scenario that can happen at vaginal birth, and unfortunately it's a bit more common at caesarean section birth because the serian section is a bloody operation. You know, there's there's blood around, and if the uterus is bleeding too much at caesar immediately after the baby comes out, then again, the way to stop that is to get the plucenter out. So that might require the baby to be the cord clamped and the baby passed over the
pediatrician a little earlier than we wanted. But if we can control that bleeding by other means, by putting clamps on things, then we can wait. Did that last night? Just waited until the at of seas last night, just waited until the cord had stopped pumping. Yeah, and all of the blood was as much as possible if the cord blood was down in the baby. Maybe took a minute.
Yeah, and it's not long that's the other thing.
It's yeah, and then clamp and cut and as long and the baby was crying and mum wasn't bleeding, so what's the rush?
Yeah?
Yeah, And that's becoming a standard at vaginal births and increasingly acceptable at sesaian section.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's still worthwhile that woman putting it in a birth plan though, isn't it just to make sure that everybody's on that page.
Yeah, absolutely, because when I say standard, I mean not everywhere and not every day. Yes. So if it's something that mums have read something about and like the sound of as a potential healthy thing that can do for the baby that's not risky, then we should do that. So let us know.
Yep. So this you mentioned just briefly about the cord blood. So there's two things you can do with the cord blood. You can either donate the cord blood and then that goes into like a public cord blood bank.
Yes, so they collect some for each research purposes and some for a public run cord bank.
Which can be used later on for.
Yeah, four matched donations. So potentially if a child got a leukemia or something, then it may be possible in some circumstances to use a donation of cord blood stem cells from a bank.
And somebody doing that might be motivated by altruism or why would somebody want to do that?
Yeah, altruistic donation, that's what it's all about. And not every hospital collects for that purpose though, So collections tend to be done in big city hospitals where they're set up for it and where they've got a huge number of births per year and can collect a lot of blood. So if you are at a smaller community hospital, regional country hospital, whatever, and they don't offer that service, don't panic because the service has enough blood.
Yes, yeah, they're getting enough.
From city hospitals for that purpose.
But somebody might have it in their birth plan that if for some reason I can't have delayed cord clamping, then I'm willing to do cord blood donation. Is it something that you have to consent for?
Yes, but don't panic if it's not offered at your hospital.
Yes, yea, yeah, I think that's important. And then some you know, you see at advertised some people there's big companies that will restore your cord blood. Yeah, thanks for listening. These quick kicks are chosen from our back catalog of episodes because of frequently asked questions we get. If you have a burning question, please pop into our speak pipe, which you can find the link on our website grow
mybaby dot com dot au. While you're on our website, you can also check out our week by week program, which now for about eighty cents a day, you can access information from us and other pregnancy experts for your entire pregnancy, birth, and the early weeks of your postpartum. You get lifetime access too, so it's yours to refer back to for any subsequent babies you might have. Thank you for joining us. We hope that you have a great week. Keep well by fein out