Before saying anything I want to state clearly that this is my personal experience and my personal beliefs.
By choosing to birth and parent this way I am no way making judgements on any other way others chose to do things.
I do not believe that my way is the best or only way.
I believe that this choice was right for me in this moment.
This is my own personal experience.
I support women from all walks of life wanting a variety of births and I love that.
My word is not gospel, my word is my opinion only here as this is a personal story.
Few quick facts on optimal cord blood-
- -Up to a third of the babies blood can be in the placenta at birth and cutting it early deprives them of that vital blood.
- -Babies who have immediate cord clamping have higher rates of anaemia and decreased fine motor and social skills later in childhood.
If we lost a third of our blood we would die or be extremely weak so why are we making babies suffer this huge trauma on their very first day as they have to learn how to breath and feed?
Seems silly to me.
It was my desire to have a natural, spontaneous, undisturbed labour and birth and it was my wish to let the baby have all of her blood.
So in this blog I will share personal private photos of our experience with delayed cord seperation, natural physiological third stage and cord burning.
WHY BURN OVER CUT?
There are a few reasons I wanted to burn instead of cut and all of them are personal, so I do not believe its for everyone in every situation as each birth, baby and family are so unique.
I wanted a slow separating phase rather than a quick cut, and I also wanted a "ceremony" of sorts to recognise how important that moment of separation, and welcoming, was.
Burning the cord also promised no infection unlike clamping and cutting.
My daughter was born quickly (the "pushing" phase was less than a minute long). She was born so quickly that we couldn't catch her so she ended up plonking to the floor but was cushioned slightly by still being in the caul (her water bag).
After the birth we got comfortable and adored our daughter while waiting for the placenta to be born.
I wanted to birth the placenta before separating it from my baby.
My daughters cord pulsed on and on for 2 whole hours after she was born, and I birthed the placenta 2.5 hours after my girl.
(Compare that to the "regular hospital protocol"!)
Allowing my daughter to receive all of her own blood made me feel that we were giving her a healthier and stronger start to life.
With the placenta sitting happily in a bowl and my daughter snuggled on my chest having her first feed we carefully placed an aluminium dish under the cord and lit our two beautiful hand made beeswax candles.
I gently asked permission from my daughter to separate her from the placenta and explained that she no longer needed it as now there were yummy milkies to be had.
My husband and I lit the candles and gently held them to the cord.
It took approximately 15 minutes to burn through the cord, all of which my daughter fed and we breathed in the atmosphere of the beautiful moment and beautiful candle light.
The burning itself had a very slight smell (it wasn't bad or gross) and every now and again a popping noise was made as it burned off.
Her Belly Button
The most surprising part of this experience however, was the fact that my daughters cord stump (which we kept apx 15 cm long) fell off and was completely healed before she was even 48 hours old!
Generally its expected to take 10-14 days to fall off and heal!
I attribute this to my daughter receiving absolutely all of her blood, the fact that the cord was completely empty and that we asked my baby and the placenta if they were ready to be separate.
Have a look here!
For more information on delayed cord clamping please visit
For more information on cord burning please visit -
And as always, if you have any questions for me or about my experience then comment below, send me a message or email or feel free to give me a bell!
Your Ballarat Doula