Mothers and babies at risk over craze for collecting umbilical cord blood

Sophie Borland
Daily Mail
September 22, 2011

Mothers and babies are being put at risk by the craze for collecting blood from the umbilical cord to protect against future illnesses, doctors and midwives warn.

Thousands of women have the blood extracted minutes after giving birth. The blood, which contains stem cells, is then stored to be used to treat the child should they ever develop leukaemia or another life-threatening disease.

But according to the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the procedure ‘distracts’ midwives at a very risky time during births.

In their latest guidance, they say that midwives should be devoting their attention to checking the newborn is properly breathing and the mother is not bleeding heavily – rather than trying to extract blood from the umbilical cord.

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15 Responses to “Mothers and babies at risk over craze for collecting umbilical cord blood”

  1. Its all so GROSS !!!!!!!!!!!

  2. The most important thing for a newborn is to get all of the blood from the placenta into his or her body. I suppose many do not understand this, for it seems even Obgyn don’t practice it. I. Kentucky, it is mandatory that the cord be immediately cut, and I was told if I wanted to leave it on until it’s pulsations where complete, I would have to go to Indiana. It is absolutely ridiculous that a mother cannot make a decision for her child. The blood from the placenta is your child’s first blood once outside in the world. When you cut that cord too soon, you start your child’s life fighting to create more blood cells, which in turn causes all sorts of problems, like lethargy that keeps them unable to breastfeed and so on. Wile this practice of collecting cord blood seems good heawrtedfor protecting your child’s future, the best thing to do for your new infant is to allow him or her to start life with all her organs, including her blood. This will give her a better immune system, and thus help her later in life to be healthy naturally. It should be no surprise, while the stateof kentucky tale me ihad no choice in the matter for allowing the cord to stay on for a simple 5 minutes, the offer to bank cord blood with some overly extreme fee to do so was thrown right out on the table. Go figure.

    • That’s the reasoning behind allowing the blood from the placenta/cord to be given to the child; it’s extremely healthy and gives the child a boost in fighting, i.e immune system, etc..

      This is also one of the reasonings behind birthing stools; the woman can sit straight up and allow gravity to help with birthing and allow the blood from the placenta to enter the child.

      People really should plan for a B.O.B. that includes birthing; I rarely hear anything about birthing gear….

      Even the antibotics a mother takes, if she’s sick, can be very harmful to the fetus, so the B.O.B. should include antibotics that are compatable with pregancy…

      If the economy is going to collapse, planning for children should be high on the list.

  3. This is just more eugenicist data mining.

  4. What a stupid excuse! That’s what an assistant is for! It only takes a few seconds to do this. I would think mid-wives would be in support of this. Clean up the baby first, you do NOT have to take the blood from the umbilical cord immediately anyway. Yes, it will start clotting but not immediately. You can also simply save the umbilical and let it dry up, they can still extract in the future from that.

  5. If it works then why not?

    • I’m not opposed to it, but I do question aspects of it.
      The body is like gardening, aka, Soil Food Web, and depending on what you add to it, you are selecting for good results or negative results. I personally think that much of the diseases are apart of a larger problem; what we eat and are told to inject into our bodies.

      So, yes, I do agree we should fight for a child’s life in whatever way we can, but I wonder if we can begin to give our kids a fighting chance well in advance through our own life styles, i.e. what are we eating, injecting, and obsorbing into our bodies.

      This deals with:
      Soaps
      shampoos
      clothing fabrics
      dyes
      plastic containers
      foods
      deoderants
      vaccines
      Laundry soap
      toothpaste

      BTW, if they want to get cord blood, they can wait until the birth is complete or nearl completion; it’s not an issue, unless the midwife creates an issue.

      • Great post charles!!

  6. No problem.

    The breast milk is very important, too and I’ve done some research on that as well. An infant’s brain is 60% fat and breast milk is high in fat and other goodies. So, fat, good fat, is needed for a child’s development. The problem comes in when a mother is not eating the right foods. Fats act, not just as energy, but as a medium for minerals, etc.. If a person is not careful about the foods they consume, they could be feeding their child, through breastmilk, pesticides and herbicides, which, from my understanding goes straight to the brain.

    Just my opinion…

  7. Normally the cord is lifted above the baby to ensure that all of the cord blood is given to the child before it is cut. WMy wife and I were asked by our midwife if wanted to save any of the cord blood for future use, i.e. disease related, etc..
    It was presented as a safety net for the child, if something were to go wrong in the future.
    We didn’t want to and we didn’t ask anything alse about it.

    I’ve helped deliver two babies, and I’m preparing for the third one, now (three different midwives). I’ve only been asked once if there were a desire to keep cord blood.

    • Ok, that explains why when my daughter was born they held the cord up, it was middle of night, so no one was saying much, just being focused. Thx for explaining that.

      • Holding a cord up does nothing if the baby is higher than the placenta. The cord is cut before the placenta is delivered, and the first clamp is placed about 4 inches from the baby.

        I delivered a lot of babies when I was a FF/Lead paramedic with the LAFD – I’d guess well over 95% to illegal immigrants. The reason the cord was lifted was so that we could place the clamps – but the baby was lower than the placenta until the cord was clamped.

        Yes, we (at least, I) saved a tube of cord blood and gave it to the ER when we arrived with the mom and baby. It was protocol, but a lot of guys forgot that step. I would simply take the plastic stopper off the top of the tube, cut the cord, and drop the cord blood into the tube, then replace the red rubber top.

        • Yes, below the placenta, my mistake.

  8. All I know is breast feeding is very important. This is where the child gets there defences from. Never heard of this blood thing before. Guess I need to look into that further to give a proper opinion.

    • Have you ever given blood before? Or lost a great amount of blood. Tink of how that affects your own body. Now, imagine a newborn who has only half of the blood he would naturally have. Tis is what happens when you cut a cord too soon. That breast milk is very important, but what is also important is that the baby has the energy to actually suckle for the breast milk. In American culture, our women are given lots of drugs to help with their pain, selfishly, which creates lots of lethargy and added water weight in the baby. Many of the surgical procedures also play a huge role in if that baby will be able to breastfeed right away, which is extremely important for the momma to be able to produce more breast milk, it works in a demand and supply fashion, not the other way around. On top of everything we do now in the delivery room, the cord gets cut and the baby starts it life with half the blood it needs, already drugged up and exhausted, its body has to fight to build more blood cells from the very beginning. This is easy science, it is well known the anemia caused by cutting cords too soon, yet in some states, it is illegal to leave the cord on, for hygiene purposes, like here in Kentucky, so I was told by my doctors. These are all reasons the uses ranked in the mid 30s globally for survival of childbirth.

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