The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS,
a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA
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The federal government now says it's OK for pregnant women and young children to be injected with mercury in the H1N1 vaccine. However, if there were more mercury-free vaccine available, they would recommend that pregnant women and young children get that instead. Don't be fooled! Thimerosal is a form of mercury! Autism rates dropping in California—is phase-out of thimerosal the reason? [from 2005] Current thinking is that only genetically vulnerable babies will be affected by the thimerosol . . . maybe even as low as 1 out of 200 or 0.5%. But if it's your child, it's 100%. Read this mother's story about her children's recovery from mercury-related autism. |
Very early clamping results in less than physiologic blood volume. The normal, term child routinely survives, but clamping the cord of a compromised child before ventilation is riskier. Initial aeration of the lungs causes reflex dilatation of pulmonary arterioles and a massive increase in pulmonary blood flow. Placental transfusion normally supplies this volume. Clamping the cord before the infant's first breath results in blood being sacrificed from other organs to establish pulmonary perfusion. Fatality may result if the child is already hypovolemic.
Because placental transfusion patterns vary widely, it is futile to attempt to give the newborn the "right" amount of blood by clamping at a set time after birth. However, it is extremely likely that the infant will have less-than-optimal blood volume if the cord is clamped before the lungs are ventilated.
In clinical practice, late clamping produces a high hematocrit, high blood pressure, and vasodilatation to accommodate the large volume of blood. These latter two factors should increase tissue perfusion. In searching the literature, I was unable to find any documented case of hyperviscosity syndrome in which the cord was clamped late, although I did find many documented cases of late clamping involving normal newborns with high hematocrits.
There are, however, many documented cases of hyperviscosity syndrome with high hematocrits (e.g., cases involving gestational diabetes or postmaturity) in which the cord was clamped before physiologic cord closure, thus creating low blood volume, low blood pressure, and vasoconstriction coupled with the polycythemia. The inadequate tissue perfusion is blamed on the high hematocrit, when the root cause of the hyperviscosity syndrome is hypovolemic vasoconstriction enforced to the fourth power.
-excerpted from George M. Morley, MB., CH. B, Cord Closure: Can Hasty
Clamping Injure the Newborn? July 1998 OBG Management.
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