Caring for your newborn's umbilical cord stump

What's the purpose of the umbilical cord?


Babies receive nourishment and oxygen in the womb through the placenta, which is connected to the inner wall of the mother's uterus. The placenta is connected to your baby by the umbilical cord through an opening in the baby's abdomen. After your baby is born, the umbilical cord is clamped and cut close to the body in a painless procedure, leaving an umbilical stump.

How long will my baby have an umbilical stump?

In about 10 to 21 days, the stump will dry up and drop off, leaving a small wound that may take a few days to heal.

Does the stump require special care?

It must be kept clean and dry. Fold the baby's diaper below the stump (or buy newborn diapers with a cut-out space for the cord) so it's exposed to the air and not to urine. When the stump falls off, you may detect a little blood on the diaper, which is normal. Avoid giving your baby tub baths until the stump falls off.

In warm weather, have your baby wear just a diaper and loose T-shirt to let air circulate and speed the drying process. Avoid bodysuit-style undershirts until the cord has fallen off. And never attempt to pull off the cord, even if it looks like it's hanging by a little thread.

Sometimes after the stump falls off some bits of lumpy flesh remain, which may disappear on their own or may need to be treated by your child's doctor. These "umbilical granuloma" are not serious and contain no nerves, so if treatment is required, it's painless for your baby.

As for the time-honored practice of swabbing the stump with rubbing alcohol, the waters have become murky. To prevent infection, your doctor or midwife will swab the cord with dye or another antiseptic when she clamps and cuts the cord. And for at-home care afterward, healthcare practitioners have long recommended cleaning the base of the stump with a cotton swab or gauze pad dipped in a little bit of rubbing alcohol once or twice a day.

Many pediatricians still support that practice, but others now suggest that it's more effective to let the cord dry naturally. That's because a 1998 study by the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation in Ontario, Canada, found that untreated cords healed in eight days, while it took ten days for alcohol-swabbed cords to fall off. (None of the 1,800 newborns in the study developed an infection.)

Pediatrician Carol A. Miller, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California in San Francisco, says she still recommends the alcohol cleaning because many parents don't like the odor and "goopiness" that sometimes result from not using the alcohol. "It's questionable whether the one- or two-day benefit of natural drying is worth it," she says.

If you're not sure which method to use, talk to your baby's doctor.





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