Newest Birthing Trend: Don't Cut the Umbilical Cord
Some mothers forgo modern obstetric facilities in hospitals and have births at home and assisted by midwives. The latest trend in this natural childbirth movement is called Lotus Birth. Participants don't cut the umbilical cord connecting the child to the placenta. Instead, they keep the placenta in a bowl and wait for the umbilical cord to wither away naturally. Madeline Scinto of the New York Post interviewed Mary Ceallaigh, a widwife and advocate for Lotus Birth:
Q: What are the best reasons to practice Lotus Birth?
There’s no wound created at the umbilical site, which lessens the chance of infection.
It allows a complete transfer of placental/cord blood into the baby at a time when the baby needs that nourishment the most. Babies’ immune systems are going through huge changes at a very rapid rate when they’re first born. Not disrupting the baby’s blood volume at that time helps prevent future disease.
The mother and baby benefit from having all the focused placed on bonding, rather than the common focus of "who's going to cut the cord, cut the bond?" Invading the natural process when there's a healthy mother and baby is likely to cause harm in some way seen or unseen.
The respect of all of what a woman conceives, not just part of it. [...]
Q: How do you eat meals, go to the restroom or run errands with a placenta attached to your newborn?
The cord usually dries and breaks off by the third day, so no mother would be running errands during that time anyway...hopefully not until at least the fourth week after giving birth!
In humid conditions, however, it may take up to 10 days for the cord to break, particularly in areas like Bali or the Australian rainforest. In these cases, the early weeks after giving birth is even more low key for the mother - and that can be a good thing....
While the placenta remains attached, it’s kept in a nice cloth, and the cord is wrapped in silk or cotton ribbon. Babies are left on a safe surface or with a caregiver while the mother goes to the restroom. For cuddling and nursing, the placenta pillow is kept near the mother and baby.
Link -via Inhabitots | Photo: Taxiarchos228
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Umbilical nonseverance is a normal practice in current Balinese birth centers served by professional staff, and super-delayed cord cutting (taking place an hour or more after the birth) has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. In drug-free births, immediate bonding is a huge neurochemical event, and it's very easy to hold a baby skin-to-skin with the flexible cord there. Holding the amazing newborn, as it finds its way to latch on for the first breastfeeding (usually within the first hour postpartum) should be the focus - not the distraction of the medically-convenient cord cutting ritual.
If parents wish to cut the cord at some point, there are many hours ahead in which to choose WHEN, and it's the child's human right to have all of its self respected (the cord and placenta are created by the same sperm & egg that made the baby... they are not maternal waste or anything like that...). Tribal people revered the cord & the placenta as the Tree of Life, and it is: without its many months of proper functioning and tremendous filtering protection, that child would not have lived. Show some respect.
As far as the appeal of natural childbirth goes... as birth is not a disease, it is not necessarily advantageous to interfere with it. In fact, the extent that the natural neurochemistry of birth is allowed to happen determines how well lactation kicks in, and how pleasurable it is for the mother.
Unlike dental surgery, where dead or decayed matter is removed or operated on, a baby is a very complex, living being with highly functional sensory systems, particularly if it is not drugged. In fact, the Word Health Organization has recommends that interventions upon natural physiological birth should be avoided if at all possible, and that unnecessary procedures upon the mother & child should be greatly reduced unless proven to increase health.
In a world of where "making use" of medical interventions is common and we have a 40% postpartum depression rate and where the U.S. is 29th on the global list of countries with the best Infant Mortality prevention, humanizing birth might in fact be an urgent matter.
It seems to me that the point is not about whether people choose Lotus Birth or not, it's about questioning the extreme disregard given to the powerful medicine of undisturbed birth & bonding. It's about waiting 20 minutes or an hour before cutting the cord, so that full attention is given bonding and and amazing newborn, rather than distracted into separation rituals.