do you mean you want to preserve the cord without drying or freezing it? i imagine you could tincture it - put it in a brown glass jar with 100 proof (or higher) alcohol. it should save indefinitely if you keep it in the tincture and maybe store it in the refrigerator. i have heard of people using cord tincture similarly to placenta tincture for the baby but don't know any other info on that.
in her book " Placenta: The Gift Of Life" Cornelia Enning talks about cord traditions and placenta traditions. this slim volume is as much an overview of placenta traditions around the world as it is information on placenta medicine. she has a section on "Lucky Charms and Amnion Jewelry" where she writes "the people of the pacific islands tie a knot into the cord before it has dried. not until the child is able to untie this knot in the mummified placenta is he or she welcome to the community of adults. a similar meaning was attributed to the dried stump of the umbilical cord in germany in the 18th century: teachers judged the intelligence and brightness of a five to seven year old child by how fast he was able to untie the knot." she has a fair amount of this sort of interesting but vaguely detailed information - like, i have no idea how these children were able to untie the knot because, assuming it was dried like the ones i make, there would be no way to untie it without totally breaking it. unless they rehydrated it i guess - that could be one way...
i also heard about a method of cord drying that involved fortune telling and i once had a placenta client who's traditional vietnamese grandmother wanted me to make a teething bracelet for the child out of his dried cord. you could also check this midwife's website for a pretty good summary of most of the placenta traditions and medicine info available on the web. i have no idea if any of this information is actually relevant to your question but i thought i'd throw it out there.
could you give us more information on what you want to do with it? |
