Cord Blood Banking

[Cruncholi]

Hi. I was wondering what any of you know about cord blood banking? I have been getting some literature in the mail and via email about it from the various baby web sites I have signed up for. It all seems pretty vague about the benefits (lots of "it may help with this or that disease"). Have any of you banked your baby's cord blood?
Thank you for your input!

 

[Peachy]

My aunt is giving us cord blood retrieval as a baby gift, which she also did for her grandson. I'm not sure if I'd do it without her, as it's rather expensive, and my soon to be son won't have any siblings. We'll be paying $125 a year just to keep it in storage.

 

[Monica11]

We're doing it, but it's based on a leap of faith that they will develop ways of using it to treat for other diseases in years to come. If the uses were limited to what they can do with it now, I wouldn't do it. And I would never do it at the expense of buying health insurance, saving for education, or any of the number of things you KNOW you'll need. Basically, it came down to this--we are lucky enough that right now, we can afford it. And we figured that we spend about 100 a month just on a cable and DSL service package. If we can justify spending money on that, we could justify this, even though it may be a bust. In other words, when I think about the luxuries I spend my money on, this didn't seem so extravagent. But it was a tough choice.

Here's a website that has some good, objective info about it.

http://www.cord-blood.org/index.htm

 

[shellnc]

Hi,

There was actually something on TV about it a few weeks ago. It seems most cord blood banks are linked to insurance companies. The TV show said that there is a federally funded program looking into banking of all cord blood in the future because it could be used by other people as well as your family. I thought that was interesting because it is so expensive and the majority of people never need it that bank it.

shellnc

 

[kristan]

I didn't bank it, but did donate it to a local cord blood bank. It was free and really easy. If someone in the family 'needs' it and it's still around, we can get it back, but it will probably be used in research or transplant. kristan