Every effort should be made to reduce rather than clamp a cord around the neck. A normal blood volume at birth should aid recovery of a compromised child. Clamp the cord with good reason. The vast research literature on placental transfusion recognizes no physiologic norm and has few controls and no standard definitions. Groups of newborns clamped at varying times after birth are averaged and compared.
Contradictions abound, as the following cases illustrate.
A child who cries when the head is delivered may achieve an optimal blood volume even if the cord is clamped at birth. The uterine contraction that delivers the infant may deliver a massive placental transfusion into the child at the same time. Individual newborns cannot be treated on the basis of what appears to happen to the average child. The transfer of blood between baby and placenta in the minutes after birth. Conclusion Normal blood volume is not produced by a cord clamp.