What is attached to the belly button

Also known as a T-type belly button, a horizontal belly button has most of the belly button fold going horizontally. This belly button type differs from a deep hollow belly button because the top portion of skin almost completely covers the innermost portion of the belly button. A round belly button is still concave or protruding inward. A light bulb-shaped belly button has very little hooding on the top, with a slightly oval shape that narrows as it goes down — much like a light bulb.

The belly button is the remnant of where the umbilical cord connected a baby to its mother during pregnancy. The button is where the cord joined the body. The umbilical cord has several key blood vessels that provide nutrients and oxygen to a growing fetus. When you were born and no longer needed the umbilical cord, a doctor or sometimes a loved one with the assistance of a doctor cut the umbilical cord.

They then placed a little clamp over it. The remaining umbilical stump usually falls off in about 2 weeks sometimes longer after birth. What remains is your navel or belly button, a leftover of where and how your umbilical cord decided to attach.

For example, a tall person can have a very small belly button while a short person can have a relatively larger one. Instead of reviewing your belly button to consider your potential life span, we encourage you to consider other, more scientific-based factors such as family history, chronic conditions, and lifestyle habits.

Pregnancy can cause the uterus to place extra pressure on the belly button. Some women do notice their belly button changes shape after pregnancy. Several plastic surgery approaches exist that can help you achieve a more aesthetically pleasing belly button. When a surgeon revises your current belly button, they call the surgery an umbilicoplasty.

Doctors can perform this procedure under local or general anesthesia. A doctor should carefully review your goals with you and explain how your belly button may change in size, shape, or location following surgery. Supermodel Karolina Kurkova is one of them.

You'll almost never see a picture of Kurkova's navel-free tummy because magazine editors photoshop in a replacement belly button so people don't think she's an alien. But screenshots from midriff-baring runway shows reveal a slight indentation where the normal innie or outie should be. Nobody is born without an umbilical cord, so all of us should have belly buttons, right?

But some babies are born with issues like umbilical hernias or a more serious condition called gastroschisis , where a baby's intestines stick out from a weak point in the abdominal wall.

Those conditions can easily be corrected surgically, but the resulting scar doesn't look much like a belly button. People who undergo tummy tuck surgery may also remove the band of flesh where the belly button resides. Some opt to have a new one created in its place, while others see it as an excellent opportunity to ditch their lint problem once and for all.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the belly button is the window to the gallbladder. In the field of minimally invasive surgery, more surgeons are performing major procedures without serious scarring by going through the belly button.

Laparoscopic surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgical procedure where surgeons make a small incision in the navel and insert a laparoscope, a telescope-like tool with a light on the end that enables doctors to see what's going on inside the gut without opening up a large incision. In a typical laparoscopic procedure, one or more additional small incisions are made to cut out and remove the target tissue. But now there's a growing interest in single-port laparoscopic surgery , where both the laparoscope and flexible surgical instruments are inserted through a special port plugged into a single incision in the belly button.

Not only is scarring hardly visible, but a single incision shortens recovery time and lowers the risk of infection. If you've never liked the look of your belly button — maybe you feel like an innie trapped in an outie body — you can have your belly button surgically altered with a umbilicoplasty.

Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Human Body. Body Parts. It's a jungle inside your belly button. Now That's Cool. Like armpits, belly buttons are home to a startling diversity of bacteria that can create an odor.

The deeper a belly button is, the more dirt and germs can build up inside. What causes an innie or an outie?

Your belly button is essentially a scar from when the umbilical cord was cut when you were a baby. This is why most of the time when the cord is around a baby's neck at birth a common event it's not a problem. At some point after the birth the cord ceases its important function of taking blood back and forth between the mother and baby.

Once cut and clamped it withers away into a firm black stump over the first week of life before falling off and leaving that much adored belly button. The life-saving treatment that's being thrown in the trash. You may have discussed with friends whether you have an "inny" or an "outty" and during pregnancy women often marvel at the exposure and flattening of their own belly button as their uterus expands with the growing baby.

People joke about belly button fluff and some decorate this part of their body with piercings and jewels. But is more going on beneath this shriveled reminder of our beginning on this earth? I've always wondered: Why is the flu virus so much worse than the common cold virus?

After the baby is born and takes that first breath, blood is shunted to the lungs, which have been reasonably quiet up to that point as they have been filled with fluid.

An amazing switch happens in the circulation with the two arteries constricting to stop the flow of blood to the placenta and then the vein slowly collapsing.

Internally the veins and arteries in the cord close up and form ligaments, which are tough connective tissues. These ligaments divide up the liver into sections and remain attached to the inside of the belly button. The part of the umbilical arteries closest to the belly button degenerates into ligaments that serve no real purpose but the more internal part becomes part of the circulatory system and is found in the pelvis supplying blood to parts of the bladder, ureters and ductus deferens a tube sperm moves through in males.

Why we love to be scared. Rarely a canal remains that connects the bladder to the belly button.