Cathy Barger writes:
>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".

OK, correct me if I'm wrong (I know you guys will!!), but I learned in
developmental anatomy (taken at the Indiana University Medical School in
1979) that the blood in the cord is the baby's blood -- There is no way for
"maternal blood" to flow through the cord to the baby.  The mother's blood
stays on her side of the placenta, and the cord merely connects the baby to
the placenta.  The placenta is part of the baby, too.  So it's the baby's
blood, not the mother's, in the cord.  That's also why harvesting of cord
blood is thought to be such a nifty idea, because it is the baby's own
blood, and contains stem cells.  Since in most parts of the world,
traditionally, the cord was not cut until long after the placenta had been
delivered, most babies throughout human history have gotten all the cord
blood in their bodies, and seemingly done just fine.

Kathy D.