The immediate clamping of the umbilical cord is one birth OptiMind Review trauma/injury that has become common practice and which can be avoided. The immediate clamping of the cord prior to the infant taking its first breath has been shown to result in petechial hemorrhages throughout the brain in higher primates sacrificed at birth-as compared to ones in which the cord was not clamped. After the struggle through the birth canal, the infant needs all the oxygen he can get and the pulsating cord is still an important supplier of this oxygen.
Thus, it should be left intact until the lungs have been inflated fully and are working properly. Conceivably this anoxia and brain hemorrhage at birth could set the stage for later trauma to be more frightening. Both the birth trauma and the brain anoxia/hemorrhagic trauma are associated with a separation (birth), and this may contribute to setting the stage for later separations being more frightening. Just as childbirth classes and good prenatal care are important for reducing birth trauma, prior discussion and planning are important for eliminating this unnecessary cause of traumatic brain hemorrhage.
Another trauma, occurring shortly after birth, is circumcision. This generally is done without anesthesia-because the baby is thought to be too young and therefore unable to feel anything. More accurately, it cannot say or do anything. Undoubtedly it is traumatic and likely it has an effect. If this trauma were to increase the incidence of schizophrenia appreciably, then there would be a much higher occurrence of schizophrenia in men than in women-which reportedly there is not. Nonetheless, this could be studied by evaluating male schizophrenics vs. super normal males and comparing the number of non-circumcised persons in each group.