Gloria Lemay is one of my heroes...

Personal experience, my second baby was born at home after a cesarean with
my first. I pushed for 7.5 hours, and it was a difficult labor. After she
was born, she was almost purple, not breathing, and limp.

My doc put her on my chest, and encouraged me to talk to her, call her name.
I did as he suggested, and slowly, she opened her eyes, pinked up, and came
into herself. It took 20 minutes for her cord to quit pulsing. She never
cried, and when she finally did, at about 2.5 years old, we were so
surprised to hear it!

My youngest was born on the kitchen floor, in a precipitous birth - 45
minutes. She cried on the way out, and her cord quit pulsing in less than 5
minutes.

It is impossible to predict when a body "fills up." There are suggestions
that the baby's first intentional cry actually closes off fetal circulation.
Fetal circulation is one of the most amazing topics I have ever encountered.

Before a baby is born, the ventricles in the heart are mostly bypassed, the
lungs are mostly bypassed, the kidneys and liver are also mostly bypassed.
They have perfunctory circulation to keep the organs alive and growing, but
since they have no true function (the mother does nearly all of the fetal
organ work - oxygen, cleansing the blood, ridding toxins) the fetus has no
use for all that blood circulation. Plus, imagine if the fetus was fully
perfused, how much larger they'd be through the birth canal!

After birth, the increase in blood perfuses the heart, the lungs, kidneys,
liver, all the ignored fetal organs. If the blood volume does not increase,
the foramen ovale may remain open, creating the "hole in the heart" which
impedes normal circulation. If the blood volume does not increase, the
ductus arteriosis (shunt from the pulmonary artery to the aorta, bypassing
the fetal lungs) may not clamp down, leading to poor lung function; excess
red blood cells do not break down to give the liver additional stores of
iron, possibly causing a lifelong anemia. 

Amazing topic. There is so much to learn, so much to know!

Best wishes,
Sam

<<
""Very early clamping results in less than physiologic blood volume. The
normal, term child routinely survives, but clamping the cord of a
compromised child before ventilation is riskier. Initial aeration of the
lungs causes reflex dilatation of pulmonary arterioles and a massive
increase in pulmonary blood flow. Placental transfusion normally supplies
this volume. Clamping the cord before the infant's first breath results in
blood being sacrificed from other organs to establish pulmonary perfusion.
Fatality may result if the child is already hypovolemic. 

Because placental transfusion patterns vary widely, it is futile to attempt
to give the newborn the "right" amount of blood by clamping at a set time
after birth. However, it is extremely likely that the infant will have
less-than-optimal blood volume if the cord is clamped before the lungs are
ventilated. 

In clinical practice, late clamping produces a high hematocrit, high blood
pressure, and vasodilatation to accommodate the large volume of blood. These
latter two factors should increase tissue perfusion. In searching the
literature, I was unable to find any documented case of hyperviscosity
syndrome in which the cord was clamped late, although I did find many
documented cases of late clamping involving normal newborns with high
hematocrits. 

There are, however, many documented cases of hyperviscosity syndrome with
high hematocrits (e.g., cases involving gestational diabetes or
postmaturity) in which the cord was clamped before physiologic cord closure,
thus creating low blood volume, low blood pressure, and vasoconstriction
coupled with the polycythemia. The inadequate tissue perfusion is blamed on
the high hematocrit, when the root cause of the hyperviscosity syndrome is
hypovolemic vasoconstriction enforced to the fourth power.
-excerpted from George M. Morley, MB., CH. B, Cord Closure: Can Hasty
Clamping Injure the Newborn? July 1998 OBG Management."  

Sent by Gloria Lemay, Vancouver BC

www.consciouswoman.org

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