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Cord complications

This weekend I am in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It is a full workshop, and everyone is from the main hospital here - either working in the hospital itself or connected through the community midwifery program. We even have one of the local obstetricians, who is very supportive of midwifery and of keeping birth normal.

At one point, we were talking about dealing with the minor complications that can occur during labour. The baby whose cord is tightly around its neck, delaying the birth, was one such example. This is the first group I have encountered where they all stated that leaving the cord intact was standard procedure.

Usually I hear that midwives routinely clamp and cut when they can’t slip the cord over the baby’s head. Once cut, the race is on to get the baby born and it is hoped that no further delay, for example from impacted shoulders, occurs because the baby is without an oxygen supply until it can breathe on its own.

Midwifery students are being taught not to ever cut the cord, but they often say that when they are doing their practical work in hospitals they are told otherwise. It was therefore refreshing to hear that here, at least, the baby is encouraged to birth itself, as usually happens, in a tumbling action that speedily produces the rest of the body and enables to cord to unwrap itself from above.

Not everything they do here is as non-interventionist as this, but it was encouraging to hear that in this instance at least, they trust the baby, and Nature, to solve the problem without further ado. We’ll work on some of the other issues they may like to consider in the same vein tomorrow.

Posted by andrea at June 06, 2004 04:49 AM

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