Placenta, Cord and Early Cord Clamping
The placenta is an organ that your body grows for the baby to use. It grows on the inside of your uterus and has a blood supply that is for the baby alone. The side that is to the mother is considered the meaty side, & the ‘shiny’ side is to the baby.
This is where the baby lives for the 9 months. The placenta is commonly called the “after birth”. This blood rich organ is about 9-11 inches across, and 1-2 inches thick. It sort of looks and feels like a piece of liver. Attached to the placenta inside is the umbilical cord, and the other end of course is attached to your baby. The placenta attaches itself to the inside of your uterus. This is where it is nourished from your body. It is very rich in blood. This means it has a lot of blood all around it and inside of it. The area where the cord is attached to the baby later becomes the belly button.
The placenta has many jobs. It sends oxygen to your baby, it sends nourishment to your baby. It removes waste products from your baby. It acts as a gland that produces hormones (these are what helps to cause mood swings in pregnancy). There are two arteries in the cord, and one vein. The vein is the largest one, and carries oxygen rich blood and nutrients to the baby. The other two are arteries and carry waste products from the baby to the placenta. The umbilical cord is filled with a jelly like stuff called whartons jelly. The cord will stop pulsating over several minutes. Once the cord has completely stopped pulsating, it is clamped and cut. To apply the clamp prior to this process will deprive your baby form blood rich oxygen that is still being sent from the placenta to the baby. When this process has stopped
then a cord clamp is applied and the
cord is cut between the two clamps. (a cord clamp is a type of instrument) The cutting of the cord does not hurt the baby because there are no nerves in the cord. Now the baby is no
longer attached to the mother.
Left: A true knot in the cord.
PLACENTA:
You can save your placenta if you wish, freeze it and have it sent off to be stored for anything future medically. If you want to there are places that will allow you to ship your placenta to them for study purposes, and also in Michigan there is a spot that they use the placenta to train dogs to find people and or missing children or bodies if they have been killed. If you are interested in any of these type in the word placenta in your search…
These links are also filled with information to read Link 2 Link 3
For those of you who wish to have your placenta encapsulated, there are several places locally who will do this for you. Click here for that information.
Early Cord Clamping
Clamping the cord before the cord has finished its job deprives the baby of up to 40% of its blood.
In this country there is a huge market for saving the baby's cord blood for future use, in case of cancer. Why? To me this is like selling bottled water. (you have water free at home, why buy a bottle of water, buy a container that you can refill and save money and the planet!)
Your baby has immature cells (stem sells) in the cord at birth, they are there at birth for a reason. Why should we deprive them from receiving this and then process it to save in some deep freezer somewhere where you pay someone to save it for you? Ask GOD (remember I believe that GOD has designed the body to be perfect and we as humans mess it up) why these immature cells are there at birth.
