Once your baby is born, the umbilical cord that was their lifeline in utero slowly stops pulsing and providing oxygenated blood to them.
As long as baby is doing well, optimal cord clamping is standard care, although this can mean different things with different providers. Most babies will get at least one minute of deferred cord clamping, but you can also request to ‘wait for white’. If you need cord blood samples taken for baby’s blood type, then the cord may need to be clamped once it has stopped pulsing, but before it is empty of blood.
If you are having active management of the birth of your placenta, the cord does not have to be clamped before the synthetic oxytocin is given (NICE intrapartum guideline 1.10.11). However, it will need to be clamped before the initiation of controlled cord traction to remove your placenta.
Some people opt to not cut the cord – this is known as lotus birth. If you would like to explore this, please talk to your midwife about it.
If you are cutting the cord, it needs to be occluded on baby’s side so baby does not continue to bleed out of the cord stump. You can opt to have a plastic cord clamp or a muka tie. You can have anyone you like cut the cord – your whānau member or friend, or your midwife.
Plastic cord clamps are ‘set and forget’ – they do not need any extra care once they are applied. They can be removed from the cord stump once it is fully dried if they are irritating baby’s skin.
Muka tie require checking at every nappy change to make sure that they are tight enough that no blood is leaking out. This is usually only needed for the first two to three days after birth. They have natural antiseptic qualities that mean that the cord is likely to fall off a bit sooner.