When You Cut The Cord may Make A Difference — Dave’s Diary

Sooner or later you have to “cut the cord” but maybe later is better?  If you were one of those dads who was in the delivery room and took the opportunity to cut your baby’s umbilical cord, is it possible that when you did it could make a difference in your child’s intelligence?Yumpin’ Yimniy it yust may be so. Researchers from the University of Sweden studied a group of 263 children.  122 had their cords cut or clamped right after birth while the other 141 had been given about three extra minutes before their umbilical cord was cut or clamped after they were born. Researchers then ran neurological tests on the kids four years later.

What do you think they discovered?  NBC News says the report is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it reveal that delaying cord cutting did not make much of a difference in the overall neurodevelopment and behavior of the participants.  But there is a But!

The findings did show that later cord clamping was associated with "higher scores for parent-reported prosocial behavior as well as personal-social and fine-motor development...particularly in boys." Really? From just 3 extra minutes connected to the “mother ship”?  That’s weird!

Researchers say that waiting at the very least causes no harm, but at the very best may help a child overcome an iron deficiency.

And who even thought of that in the first place! (NBC News)