Eli5: why is a part of the umbilical cord left on a newborn baby? Why not just cut it all the way to where the belly button will be?
In: Biology
When cutting the cord, you need to place a clamp of some kind between baby and where you cut (best practice used to be two clamps baby side, one placenta side, and cut between them, but I haven’t seen that pushed for a while).
You do this to stop massive bleeding, which is bad for babies. Obviously, you need to have space to place the clamp(s), so you physically couldn’t cut right up to the umbilicus.
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