Your body isn't fit for purpose. Your baby isn't safe in there. Evolution has failed here, Love....

A heart shaped knot in a rope, against a wooden background illustrating the idea that knots in umbilical cords are not as dangerous as we have been led to believe

Umbilical cords are A-OK...

It's a fear parents-to-be are conditioned to; that the umbilical cord (the very thing that keeps your baby alive) is inherently dangerous.

Actually, having a cord around the neck, shoulders or chest is so common that many midwives just don't bother to mention it. But when medics DO tell new mothers that 'the cord was round the neck', what they often DON'T say is 'which is completely normal'. Without that critical bit of context, women often assume they & their baby have just survived a close shave.

So 'cord round neck' becomes part of their birth story, they share it with other women, and so it gets to be one of the things that pregnant worry about.

When you think about it, what this REALLY means is;

"Your body isn't fit for purpose. Your baby isn't safe in there. Evolution has failed here, Love".

Which, actually is BALLS. There ARE things about labour and birth that you should be concerned about, and you should plan for. But cords round necks really isn't one of them (and, a bit like Brexit, while you're worrying about that, you're not focusing on the really important stuff).

So here are the 5 reassuring things you need to know about cords;

About a 3rd of babies are born with the cord around their neck, shoulders and/or chest. It's known as a Nuchal Cord.
The cord is protected by a substance called Whartons Jelly (the same stuff that keeps your eyeballs round). This jelly stops the vessels in the cord being squeezed, which means the blood, nutrients and oxygen can keep on keeping on. Check out the FB page for a bit of film which shows it cleverly doing just that...
Clever old evolution even took care of the cord before there were scissors. When the cord is exposed to the air as your baby is born, and therefore a temperature change, it changes in viscosity, which *DOES* clamp the cord vessels naturally (so actually, there isn't any NEED to clamp the cord - it's just a thing we've got into the habit of doing).
Wharton's jelly was discovered by Thomas Wharton in 1656, meaning we've had 363 years to feel reassured....and yet somehow we're not
In rare occasions there CAN be problems, if the cord drops ahead of the baby, and is squeezed during contractions. This is usually picked up by when a midwife checks in on the baby with a foetal heart rate monitor - and (thank goodness for the NHS), then plans can be made to help babies safely Earthside.