Cutting the umbilical cord is a symbolic part of childbirth but increasing numbers of Australian women are choosing to leave the cord and placenta attached until they fall off naturally — which can take three or four days.
So called “lotus births” are growing in popularity in Australia, particularly in the past two years.
Lotus birth expert Shivam Rachana from the International College of Spiritual Midwifery in Victoria says Australia’s first lotus birth baby is now 26 years old, and thousands have been born in the country since then.
“It’s definitely growing in popularity and in the past two years in particular there has been a huge move towards lotus births,” she told aww.com.au.
“Severing the cord after birth deprives the baby of all the stem cell-rich blood in the placenta and cord, which can be up to 50 per cent of the baby’s total blood volume.
“It’s totally vital. All the major organs are waiting for that blood and if it doesn’t come, it can wreak havoc on the baby’s immune system.
“The placenta is one of the baby’s most vital organs. It’s as important as the heart, the lungs, the kidneys. By cutting it off after birth we are trashing one of nature’s greatest treasures.”
But while women in Victoria and NSW are embracing lotus birth, mums-to-be of Queensland are slower to get on board with lotus births.
Gabriella Ambrose offers lotus births through her Brisbane-based doula business Beautiful Births.
She has found her clients extremely reluctant to agree to lotus births, despite her best efforts to convince them.
“I offer it to every client but only about one in 50 women accept it,” she said. “It feels like too much work but to be honest it couldn’t be simpler or more natural.
“It certainly doesn’t seem to be getting more popular in Brisbane. Women just can’t seem to get their head around it which is their loss, and their baby’s.”
But while natural birth experts brand lotus births “vital”, scientific studies suggest there are no benefits to leaving the cord and placenta attached longer than three minutes post-partum.
“There has been research in the past few years which found that when doctors delay clamping the cord for three minutes, the baby receives higher levels of iron which prevents anaemia, but beyond that time frame, leaving the cord attached to the baby serves no purpose because it no longer feeds nutrients to the baby,” Hilda Hutcherson, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Columbia University.
Other experts have argued lotus births could actually leave newborns vulnerable to infection.
“If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby,” Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists spokesman Patrick O’Brien said.
“The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. At the post-delivery stage, it has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue.”
But leading obstetrician Dr Michel Odent argues that lotus births could actually decrease the risk of infection.
“Teaching the world that rushing to cut the cord is not a physiological necessity would have a number of practical implications,” he said in Rachana’s book Lotus Birth.
“One of them would be to eradicate neonatal tetanus, a major cause of death in many developing countries. Neonatal tetanus is a complication of early cord cutting.
“If the cord is kept intact for several hours it becomes thin, dry, hard and bloodless. Then it can be cut without any need for cord care practices. The risk of neonatal tetanus is eliminated.”
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