Wow this was a lot more disgusting than I expected. When I was going through it, I didn’t understand why no one had warned me about this. I understand that others don’t have quite the same experience with the cord as I do but none-the-less here was mine.
First, it was always in the way and I was afraid of it getting tugged. When it started falling off, while it had been dry up until that point, it started bleeding and became gooey. This was nasty. Helpful tip: we put a square of gauze over it so that it wasn’t rubbed by his clothes and when it bled, it bled on the gauze rather than the clothes (the only problem with this is if the cord sticks to the gauze- I just watched for this and used water on a q-tip to help peel the gauze off). It did this for a few days- bleed a bit, get gooey, start to seem a bit better, bleed again, gooey, etc. The pediatrician actually cauterized the belly button to help it dry out and stop the bleeding and while it helped with the bleeding it made the gooeyness worse. Finally it started detaching. Then it held on by a thread for a while. Finally it fell off completely and we did a happy dance because it had just not been a pleasant experience.
A couple pieces of information I got in the process:
- It can take up to a month for the cord to fall off
- Even if its hanging on by a threat DO NOT help it fall off by pulling on it etc
- Bleeding doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem
- Watch for signs of infection if bleeding occurs- redness, swelling, etc
- While they used to recommend alcohol to help dry the cord out and keep the area around it clean, they don’t really say that anymore- now they just say to keep it dry
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