AS A senior obstetrician, I was fascinated by actress Susan Roces’ emphatic disclosure regarding the circumstances of her first encounter with daughter Grace Poe, as reported in the Inquirer (8/19/15). Speaking in Filipino, she stated that the umbilical cord was still attached when the infant was discovered in a church in Jaro, Iloilo.
Having delivered thousands of babies and observed them hours and days after birth, I know that the umbilical cord is left attached to a baby’s abdomen a couple of inches or so immediately after birth. In some hospitals, the distal end is crushed with a
metal or plastic clamp to stop the flow of blood. (When the child is delivered by a hilot or midwife outside a hospital, the remaining cord is ligated at the tip with a tight string.)
The gross appearance of the membrane that covers the blood vessels and the umbilical gel that surrounds them gives a clue to the time of delivery of the baby:
- Within hours: The cord is fresh, turgid with shiny membranous skin and residual red, brown or greenish-black blood at
the end.
- Within days: The cord is dryer, more shrunken, more opaque.
- One week or so: The umbilical attachment to the skin is dry and turns brown. The cord stump may detach in 7-10 days after birth.
Grace’s mother is the best witness who can testify how old the baby was at the time of discovery. Definitely, she was born in Jaro, Iloilo, for how far away may a newborn baby come a few hours or days after birth?
The child could not have been born outside the Philippines and brought to Iloilo by the natural mother because after delivery, a woman is confined at home or in a hospital and forbidden to travel for weeks—and by that time the umbilical stump had already fallen off.
She could not have been born a full-term baby from a foreign mother coming to the Philippines because no pregnant woman beyond seven months is accepted for air travel by international carriers.
Once, Grace Poe sat at our table in one of the events at Makati Medical Center, and I confirmed that definitely she is a Caucasian. But then many of our talented artists and beautiful mestizas in show biz are Caucasians of Filipino parentage born and raised in Iloilo.
All arguments are destined to end up with the conclusion that the lovely Sen. Grace Poe is a natural-born Filipino.
Dr. Santiago A. del Rosario is a former president of the Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.