I only know of one person that has done this, and honestly I wonder if I should regret not banking our children's cord blood. Have any of you banked cord blood?

If you are considering it, here is an article that discuss the pros and cons and even the option of donating your baby's cord blood to a public cord blood bank.

http://pediatrics.about.com/od/agesandstages/i/cord_blood_bank_2.htm

CBR, CORD BLOOD REGISTRY - this is the one we gathered information about:

http://www.cordblood.com/


AND this one, too

VIACORD:

http://www.viacord.com/



FAMILY CORD BLOOD SERVICES:

http://familycordbloodservices.com/

We choose to bank our sons cord blood. Many reasons played into this. We did a lot of research and even though its still in its early stages there seems to be advances everyday. We are registered with Viacord, we have already recieved a letter from the University of Florida telling us of a diabetic research project. It is also being used to help people who have major heart attacks rebuild their heart tissue. In cases like that we were told that the cord blood could be used to help other family members ie parents/grandparents not just the child. Also the fact that we do not plan any more children means it could be hard for our son to find a match if needed. Hopefully Sebastian will never need it, but I like knowing its there.

AJBrock, would you tell us about your experience more? What hospital and doctor did you use and were they well versed in the collection of the cord blood? Also do you mind sharing the costs of banking cord blood?

Sorry its taken so long to get back on this. We paid right at $2000.00 for the intial fee. Then we will have a yearly storage fee of $99.00. My OB was Dr. Langley and he had worked with Viacord before so no issues there. Its a decision that has to be made well before your due date. The kit was sent to our house when I was almost 30 weeks along. We were told not to open it, just to pack it with our hospital bag. It comes with instructions for the delivery staff. We called a rep for Viacord on our way to the hospital as told. This let them know to be ready for a pick up, we called again about 45 minutes after our son was born. They sent someone to the hospital to pick up the package and that was that. About 3 weeks later we got a statement saying the volume of cord blood recieved plus the amount of nucleated cell count. According to current research you need at least a 100 million nucleated cells for the blood to be useful transplant in the future. So they let you know right away if you do not meet that standard. Hopefully we will never have a need to use this but we still consider it a good investment in our childs future. Some interesting things to point out. You can register so friends and family can help with the cost as gifts. They even send cards to put in your shower invites. Also my Dr cut my son's cord very close to his belly in order to preserve as much of the cord as possible. It was almost impossible for the nurse to get the clamp on the cord. This was a blessing as the clamp came off the next morning and the cord dried and fell off before he was 8 days old. This also must have been a good idea on the Drs part because we ended up with more than 2 full bags of blood and 1,453 million nucleated cells. I hope this info is helpful.