Most hospitals deliver the baby then lay the baby on Mom's chest, they then wait a minute (or perhaps 2) before they clamp and cut the cord. But more and more research has been done about waiting MORE than one or two minutes following birth to cut the cord. Here's the deal:

When Baby is still "connected" by the cord, he is still connected to the placenta, his lifeline. His placenta is circulating blood through him, meaning that at any given time, the placenta contains at least 1/3 of his total blood supply, even after birth. This means that if his cord connecting him to his placenta is severed immediately (or even one or two minutes) after birth, he is being cut off of 1/3 of his blood supply! HOWEVER, 15 minutes (or so) after birth, the blood from the placenta has had a chance to completely drain into Baby, so when the cord is cut, he still has 100% of his blood in him. I have attached a picture below to illustrate the draining of the blood into the baby. You can see that in picture one, a picture taken of the cord immediately after birth, the cord is still full, red and pulsating, after many minutes, the cord turns white and goes limp, telling us that all of it's blood is in Baby.

So, what do you think? When your next baby is born, will you request that the clamping of his cord will be delayed until the cord becomes white and limp?

Do you know any more information about delayed cord clamping that you would like to share?