10 Things About Your Belly Button That You’ve Probably Never Thought About Before

Your delivery has nothing to do with your belly button

You’re getting a belly button regardless of how your birth goes, and the idea that your delivery room doctor has any influence over this is just one of the many myths surrounding pregnancy and birth. The belly button marks the area where your umbilical cord used to be attached, says Christopher S. Baird, PhD, a physics researcher, instructor, and adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

When you’re in the womb, your umbilical cord attaches to your navel at one end and your placenta—a mass of blood vessels attached to the wall of your mother’s uterus—at the other. Your mother’s food and oxygen goes through her blood to the uterus where they are exchanged to your blood, which carries the nutrients from the placenta, down the umbilical cord, through your navel, and finally into your body.

Once you are born, the umbilical cord becomes useless now that your mouth, lungs, and digestive tract are functioning. The body responds to the transition by closing up the point where the umbilical cord connected to your body and created a belly button.

To free the body of the useless umbilical cord, your doctor cuts it down to a mere stub that hangs off your stomach. Within a few days to weeks, the stub will fall off as a result of the belly button naturally closing.

from Reader's Digest http://ift.tt/2tHK39q