ABSTRACT

The reflection on the best moment of cutting the cord is certainly not recent. Aristotle in his Historia Animalium (ca. 369 BC), one of the great classics of Western philosophical and scientific thought, commented: "it often happens that the child seems dead at birth when in reality he is simply weak but, as long as the cord has not been bound, the blood flows inside.
The expert midwives know that by squeezing the cord and sending the blood to the child, it, which until recently seemed lifeless, immediately comes back to life ”.
In 1801 Erasmus Darwin, British philosopher, physician and naturalist and paternal grandfather of the famous Charles Darwin, argued that it was not good to cut the umbilical cord too early and recommended that it be done only after the baby had breathed repeatedly and the cord had stopped pulsing. The ancient approach to cord clamping is well represented in tribal communities who believe it is the placenta itself that gives birth to the fetus and newborn, and so the cord is not clamped at least until it stops pulsing or, as in the case of of the natives of Syria, after about 30 minutes until the life force of the placenta is exhausted in the new born.
Currently, the International Federation of Gynecologists and the World Health Organization (WHO) in their updates to the guidelines on the prevention of postpartum hemorrhage and on the management of the third stage no longer recommend early clamping as an integral part of active management. Both papers refer to the benefits of late clamping by stating that the cord should not be clamped before necessary.