Cord-cutting

A lot of new dads look forward to cutting the umbilical cord when their baby is born and holding that child for the first time. But new research indicates waiting a few extra minutes for that special moment can help their baby later on.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is a busy place, filled with babies born too soon and too sick to go home. But what if you could delay doing one thing in the delivery room that might help improve some of their outcomes. What if you delayed clamping the umbilical cord? Dr. Judy Mercer says, "We're only talking about a brief delay of thirty to forty seconds with lowering the little baby down because gravity helps the baby to get more blood."Dr. Judy Mercer is a nurse midwife and University of Rhode Island professor and researcher interested in making this a widespread practice. Dr. Mercer says, "As a midwife, my routine practice is to delay cord clamping, that's how I got interested in the topic to begin with." Dr.

Mercer points to two previous smaller studies she's conducted. Dr. Mercer says, "In the past study we found the babies that had the delay had less bleeding in their brains and less infections, significantly less bleeding and less infections during their NICU stay." Dr. James Padbury says, "It's really extraordinary that such a simple maneuver could have those sorts of positive outcomes."This new larger study could change that. More than 200 preemies will be enrolled to validate earlier positive findings and to identify the causes of these benefits. The infants will be randomly selected to the group in which cords will be clamped immediately or the group in which cord clamping will be delayed.