I am preparing a talk on placenta’s for the Joyous birth festival and I thought I’d like to share these pictures together just to illustrated the diversity of life.
The Cord connects the placenta to the baby and usually has 2 arteries and 1 vein running through it. It’s covered in Wharton’s jelly which is a mucous tissue that protects the vessels.
After the birth the jelly collapses in which has a natural clamping effect on the vessels. This is usually triggered by a change in temperature as far as we can tell.
I thought it would be interesting to try and find out if anything in particular affects length of cord. Actually it’s not very interesting but if you’d like to read lots of very complicated words on development you can go check out the molecular structure.
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What a great blog to come across! Very informative! Thanks for taking the time to post in your busy life!
~Dawn aka Momza
What a contrast! The pic of the short cord in particular has me wondering… I was told a story once about a woman who had a c/s, ostensibly for something as spurious as FTP, and was then told it was “lucky she had the c/s because the cord was only three inches long”. It sounded like utter rubbish to me, but now I’m wondering, is it possible for a cord to be only three inches long? (I still doubt the veracity of the claim in this particular case because of other circumstances involved, but maybe I need to be more careful about what I write off as obstetric nonsense in future!)
Hi Lisa, do you know if there are any RCT’s on the length of time for the cord to stopping pulsating prior/during physiological third stages… esp compared to say… waterbirth’s….??if temp is a factor, that might be shown if there is a major difference when cord remains in warm water after birth…and of course for how long etc….i’m interested!
I’ve always learned that a more active baby will have a longer cord. Makes sense.
I birthed with a woman last week who had an amazing cord. Right at the umbi mark there was a cyst formation about the size of a medium sided marble. It was totally separate from the vessels, and contained clear fluid. The cord was lovely and thick. I took a photo, but it didn’t come out very clearly. It was attached to a beautiful large and healthy placenta too. The cyst absorbed and didn’t present any problems to the baby as it dried out. Just a lovely variation of normal.
Ries, there is evidence that says that the cord takes longer to stop pulsing in the water