<<Would someone please explain to me why the umbilical cord is cut so
quickly.  Why don't they gently lay the baby on the mother's abdomen and
just LEAVE IT ALONE.>>

Seems to me I remember a lot of fuss about this when I was in nursing school
(more than a few years ago) - if I remember right, the medical conventional
wisdom was that the cord needed to be cut quickly because the more maternal
blood flowed through the cord to the baby, the more rbc's (red blood cells -
sorry) the baby's "immature liver" had to break down, hence the more likely
the baby to be "jaundiced". Am I remembering this all wrong, or is that what
I would have been taught? Is this research-based, or is this one of those
"we do it because we do it" situations?

One of the things I love about lactnet is that it makes us think! Thinking
about this question now, for example, I find it doubtful that we would be
designed in such a way that immediate cord-cutting was critical. We know a
lot more about normal NB's and their liver functions and jaundice than we
used to (at least I know more than I used to - obviously still not enough,
and lots of our locals peds don't seem to have heard much news about neontal
jaundice recently...)- is there current research re: this cord-cutting
thing?

Happy New Year! Cathy Bargar