07/11/2025
Raise your hand if this is among the top ten questions you get from people considering a non-hospital birth.
Reposted from .labornurse
A nuchal cord is a medical way of saying that baby’s cord is wrapped around their neck.
This is something you’ve probably heard about and you may even know someone who had this happen during their birth.
❗This isn’t at all surprising because nuchal cords are actually quite common – occurring in a little more than 1 in 3 births!
And even though the idea of the cord being wrapped around the neck seems very scary, in reality, the chance of any complications is rare.
Sometimes we know about nuchal cords ahead of time because they are seen on ultrasound, but in many cases, we don’t know until baby is born.
👉🏻 The most common complication occurs during labor.
Basically, when the cord is wrapped around baby’s neck, it can be compressed during contractions, which in turn reduces the amount of blood (and therefore oxygen) that is getting to baby.
Often time, we see a decrease in baby’s heart rate on the fetal monitor, which tells us the cord is being compressed in some way - and many times we can intervene!
🤔 Did you know that this usually isn’t a cause for complications during birth?
