What do you think? Has anyone banked or donated cord blood? It seems to me that it is a very expensive gamble for a very slim chance of a payout, and my natural skepticism about the profit-driven aspect of these kind of things makes me disinclined to take the leap. And anything that comes with four-color glossy brochures and a $1250 coupon makes me think that marketing is the biggest piece of their business.
There only a few known uses for cord blood as it now stands: leukemia or lymphoma, aplastic anemia, severe sickle cell anemia, and severe combined immune deficiency. None of these are in my family's medical history, and none were disclosed in Jacques' medical history forms, but the fact is that there are few ways to verify the information on donor forms gives me just the tiniest pause....
I asked the midwife, who blinked and looked at me as if she had never heard of cord blood banking before, and then basically told me she had no idea. [I do not love this midwife, though I am assured of her competence. But wouldn't you think if you are in the business of birthing babies you would bother yourself to learn about the pros and cons of cord blood?!]
Speedy & I have decided that we will probably donate instead of banking, trusting karma rather than pharma to come through for us if we are ever in need.
What would you do? What are other people doing? What have you done?
I like the idea of donating.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, you cannot bank/donate AND delay cord clamping. We considered both, then opted for the latter since it has many known benefits, including increased blood volume, red blood cells and enough iron to last many months.
ReplyDeleteLL13-- Now there's another variable that hadn't even crossed my mind! Do you have more info?
ReplyDeleteWe tried to donate but couldn't because of the anonymous sperm donor. Sucks.
ReplyDeletei feel like this is almost as "hot" a topic these days as to snip or not to snip...we have been asking around and have gotten very different responses. We were considering donating too. We ran it by our midwife (who also is a fan of delaying cutting the cord until it stops pulsing) and she didnt seem to express any concerns. I too am interested in LL13's advice on that...
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Our doula is anti-cord blood banking and after talking to her we decided not to. As LL13 said, when they are going to bank, they need to clamp right away. There is still oxygen-rich blood pumping into your baby through the cord for a while after delivery and, from what we understand, it can only be beneficial to your newborn to have that blood supply. If there were some kind of specific reason to do it we would, but considering the benefits to letting nature take its course we are going to pass.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopelessly behind on blogs (so I'm still getting to your older posts) but:
ReplyDeletewe were dead set on banking blood, but we would have to multiply the price by two, and also our doctor thought it wasn't worth the gamble, so in the end, we didn't. We forgot to ask about donating, and then the doctor (or someone?) mentioned something about it after V gave birth. They took blood from, I think, Ellie's cord, and we didn't even know it. I mean, we're glad that they did, of course, but it's kind of interesting that they do it at this hospital w/o mentioning it. But it made us happy to know.
Also, you may remember that my mom had a bone marrow transplant earlier this year, and she did an autologous one, so she donated her own cells. I guess that's the wave of the future b/c your body can't reject it.
Personally, we were always planning on doing it. Only because of a history of people in Jenn's family that really could have used their cord blood. I think if you don't have too much of a history, I would simply donate.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't do it. I see many good reasons to do so...but we just didn't. And we would've delayed cord clamping/cutting but had transferred to the hospital from the midwife center due to complications and it wasn't an option since he came out covered in meconium.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't do it and considering the amount of thought we put into everything else related to getting pregnant and being pregnant, we also didn't think much about it. It came down to being too expensive for something so unknown. Also, not a single doctor, specialist or doula(including pre-natal class) even mentioned it to us as something we should think about.
ReplyDeleteWe have decided not to bank the cord blood for our own future use. Like you, we've been looking into donating it instead. Unfortunately it seems that there isn't a facility close enough to our hospital that would be able to take it.
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to learn more about the delayed cord clamping now. Are there any drawbacks or risks? Increased Jaundice?
Haven't done my own personal research on this but my best friend and her husband are both physicians (and he is a pediatrician) and they didn't do it for EITHER of their children. So, that seemed good enough proof for me that it wasn't necessary.
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