Find your diamond
Find your jewelry
shape
carat
color
clarity

Home Cord Blood Banking?

blushingbride

blushingbride

Brilliant_Rock
Joined
Nov 10, 2006
Messages
1,653
Did anyone decide to do it - not do it - and why? Also, if you did, what company did you use for the banking?

I've been looking into doing it throught the Cord Blood Registry, but have heard mixed things on this topic. For example, I had read not to bother spending the thousands it costs to store the cord blood because there are other methods out there that are just as effective in saving children's lives, etc.

Any insight you can shed would be great!
 
I saw something on this recently on the news where they were doing a 'scam' report and apparently a lot of these companies are viewed like scams because they are expensive and their uses are limited.

The news segment said that a fair amt of things that could happen are NOT covered by the cord blood--yes there are some that are important but that a lot of the things you would think could happen would not be assisted by cord blood. I am not sure what these are, this just stuck with me.

The other thing that I remember was something about... you can donate your cord blood to the hospital ahead of time (sign paperwork etc) and that cord blood is often used to help babies where their own cord blood is not available. So they were saying that you don't even need to bank your own most times if you can avail yourself of donated hospital cord blood.

I didn't do much research myself only asked a bit in the preggo forum and it seemed the feeling was not to do it...it was expensive and no guarantee on anything being 'useful' later. So we didn't do it. And I meant to donate ours but Greg was not super keen on the kid's DNA floating around in some hospital. I prob could have talked him around to it but never got around to it, boo on me.
 
I researched it. My husband and I did not fall into a demographic where banking was more 'recommended', and we do not have a family history of diseases where cord blood banking would be more warranted.

I did, however, want to donate our cord blood. At our hospital, the only real option for donation was going through Cryobanks International. They send you a kit that your health care provider uses to collect the cord blood. We filled out all the paperwork, only to get a letter back stating that they limit the number of donations per month (I'm sure a resource issue) and they had already met their maximum for our due date month (August). So, I'm bummed we won't be able to donate.
 
I was all set to do it when I was pregnant with my first but after talking to my OB, my mind completely changed! As Mara mentioned, my doctor also said it was kind of a scam, too expensive and not very practical. I also got really annoyed because I was bombarded by phone calls and mailings from those places and it was really a turn off. When it came time to have my 2nd child, I completely forgot about it and didn't even ask--I thought maybe it would make sense if you have 2 kids because the cord blood from the 2nd one could potentially help the first one ala My Sister's Keeper but I had so many other things on my mind that this never came up! I think if it was that big a deal, our doctors would stress the importance much more. I like the idea of donating my own cord blood but that option was never brought to my attention. You should talk to your OB and get a real professional opinion.
 
No - the articles from the BMJ were not positive.

Plus, hospitals aren't always too happy about someone coming in to do the cord-bloods and here the hospital staff won't do it so you have to call the company to come and do them - not great if it's 3am. If things don't go to plan it may not be possible to do them at all and then you've spent a load of money for nothing, they hardly let them into the OR.

I donated the placenta for research.
 
We did it. We have unfortunately been touched by many peope in our lives who have dealt with childhood luekemia. I had two friends who struggled with it growing up and DH's best friend lost her older brother to it.

I asked my ob/gyn about it and he said "if you can afford it, do it. If you can't afford it, don't worry about it." He did preface that statement with "all of my grandchildren will have banked cord blood". I found this pretty profound coming from my ob/gyn since he is the most laid back person, and after 30+ years of delivering babies not much gets him excited.

It is pricey, and you have to be careful who you use. There have been quite a few companies that have started up and then folded within a relatively short period of time robbing people of their money and their banked blood. (I think this has greatly contributed to the who process being labeled as fraudulent or as a scam.) After careful research there are only two that I would use, CBR and Viacord.

They are very similar, and pricewise (last year) I think CBR was $1900 and Viacord was $2100. Their is also an annual storage fee billed near the storage date of about $125.

DH and I look at this like buying insurance, it seems like a waste of money because it costs a fair amount and you will probably never use it. But if you need it you will thank god you did it.

Also, I have had a few friends scoff at me for "wasting money" on it, but didn't think it was funny when I asked them how much they had "wasted" on designer shoes and handbags. We all have different priorities.
 
Pandora said:
No - the articles from the BMJ were not positive.

Plus, hospitals aren't always too happy about someone coming in to do the cord-bloods and here the hospital staff won't do it so you have to call the company to come and do them - not great if it's 3am. If things don't go to plan it may not be possible to do them at all and then you've spent a load of money for nothing, they hardly let them into the OR.

I donated the placenta for research.
Click to expand...


I delivered at 2:17 am in the US. In the US it is the delivering OB/GYN's responsibility to collect the cord blood after delivery (vaginal or c section), but it is your responsibility to bring it with you to the hospital and give to the staff for the MD to use. After collection (it takes only a few minutes), it is your DH's resposibilty to call the phone number on the box so that a courier can pick it up. My courier arrived 20 mins after we called. I had yet to be moved to my post partum suite.

Also the company that we used does not charge you until the cord blood has been recieved, tested for infectious diseases, counted to make sure an acceptable amount was collected, and stored.
 
We didn't. Just out of our budget, and I did look into it when I was pg w/our 1st. As mentioned before I ended up w/an unreal amount of phone calls about it, and even telling them we couldn't afford it didn't stop them. If we could've afforded it, we might've looked into it a bit more but..
 
Funny, we didn't get any phone calls about it. I got lots of junk mail about it, but no calls. I guess its because we didn't call their 1-800 #'s. I emailed one of their reps directly (I was refered by a friend).
 
I was told only minorities benefit from banking but since my DH and I are not, finding a donor would be fairly easy.
 
we donated. we have a huge medical center and are affiliated with a huge transplant center so it was easy. all i had to do was say yes i want to donate and poof! it was done.

PLEASE consider it if you're not going to private bank. doesn't cost anything, doesn't hurt you or your baby, it would be otherwise thrown out with the trash, and may save someone else's baby's LIFE.

ok PSA over ::)
 
Mostly BS from the places that solicit you to bank with them-their stats are generally outright lies and they don't tell you all the caveats. If you run the stats of actually needing it AND the cordblood being useable (because something ridiculous like 70 % of banked cordblood is unusable which of course you don't know until you have paid the storage fee for years and then against all odds need to use it) AND it working the odds are just so so so small it isn't worth it. Not to mention the fact that in MANY cases where it would be useable you can't actually use the own child's cordblood! You need someone else's or a sibling's! But of course the place selling the banking doesn't tell you this. The research supports all of my points if you dig a bit beyond the places that are trying to sell the banking to you.

And at least when I was preggo with my twins NONE of the donation places would bother. Even more room for error I guess with banking twin cord blood so they all gave me a big fat no. Of course it is totally worth checking to be sure this is still the case but unfortunately we were not able to donate ours which made me sad. :(sad

It's unfortunate because while I think it isn't worth it to bank your own (unless $ is not an issue) it IS a great thing to donate it if you can!
 
Nope, we couldn't afford it at the time.
 
Thanks all! I actually have a Drs. appt. this Friday so, I'll be sure to bring this up to her as well. I'm leaning towards no, but will definitely donate if given the opportunity by my hospital. I also think esp. with twins, it could be very expensive for us.
 
We are not banking for personal use, but we are hoping to donate for research.
 
We did, and I'm not ashamed to say it!

I agree with what's posted here. I did the research too, and was not going to do it, and was going to donate instead.

As Tacori mentioned, I did read something about minority of mixed kids and that it might be good for us to do it since Amelia was going to be a mixed kid.

But really, what did it for us was the price. I mentioned it offhand to a friend, and she said she met a good friend of a friend who offered a really aggressive discount. She was nice enough to tell me what she paid, and it was way waaaaaaaay cheaper than what I had been researching (which included "promotions.") It didn't break the bank for us at all, so I thought, why not? Who knows what the future will bring, or what they'll be able to do with this stuff. And if it is a scam, I was OK with the amount I paid for a false sense of security. :tongue:

We also have rich friends who don't do any research and ignore any advice I give them who use me as a reference, so I haven't paid for storage thus far. :rolleyes:

But basically at the prices out there, I probably would have passed.
 
Hudson_Hawk said:
We are not banking for personal use, but we are hoping to donate for research.
Click to expand...


Just want to reiterate/clarify, there's banking cord blood for personal use (think your own personal blood bank) via companies like Viacord and there is public cord blood banking where the blood is used like an organ donation for transplant or research. The former is expensive and some say a scam, the latter is the equivalent of donating a kidney or other organ to save someone's life or assist in researching diseases and developing cures. We are taking part in public cord blood donation.
 
TravelingGal said:
We did, and I'm not ashamed to say it!

As Tacori mentioned, I did read something about minority of mixed kids and that it might be good for us to do it since Amelia was going to be a mixed kid.
Click to expand...

I should have clarified, I meant two minorities have a child. Basically a rare pairing would yield fewer matches, if I am making sense. Had her father been a popular minority (as in, not a minority in other parts of the world just in my country), we still wouldn't have. Had we both been of a *small* minority, I probably would have been tempted. Insurance is for peace of mind and if it will make you sleep better at night and you can easily afford it, go for it. I think a large part of life is following my gut.
 
Ah, thanks for clarifying Tacori. I can't remember exactly what it was I read...so long ago.

I do agree that pretty much it's a waste of money and they prey upon the fears of parents. But we don't regret doing it, so that probably says something. I'd at least be honest here and let people know if we regret it. And I think I would have regretted if we paid a lot.

We went with one of the big ones...CBR, I believe. Someday, I'm sure I'll read in the papers that the company is being prosecuted for shonkiness. :roll:
 
we banked with both kids. I have some family in the medical community (including a peds nurse who has seen it used many many times to treat a patient) and they all gave me good reason to bank. It's also less expensive and competitive in canada so i am not as concerned with it being shady.

We wanted to bank publically with our 2nd child. I don't like the 'for-profit' aspect of it at all. So i looked into it and was going to make the donation but b/c i was planning a home birth i was not accepted as a donor. By the time my home birth plans were changed and we decided on a hospital birth, it was too late to make arrangements with the public bank (which is out of province) so we went with a local private bank again.

it's one of those things that you hope you never use, but it's still nice to know it is there. I think, $1200 is a lot of money to spend on something you will probably never access, but it would be insignificant if a child, sibling or family member did indeed benefit from it. Yes, these companies prey on fears and i guess i got sucked in....

if we have a 3rd kid, we will donate to a public bank
 
after doing research, we signed up and are banking with Cord Blood Registry.

DH & I do not fall under any of the particular risk categories, but for the price we thought it was worth it, especially that the cord blood can be used for immediate family members as well. CBR does e-mail coupons from time to time if you request info and do not sign up immediately....they sent me a $250 coupon which was pretty nice.

FYI- CBR does test to ensure the collection taken is usable in the future once it arrives at their lab after birth or they will refund your money.
 
My OB highly recommended it, so we banked the cord blood of both of our sons with CBR. People don't think that those life-shattering diseases can occur, but I know several people who were diagnosed with blood cancers while children or young adults, and it's so tragic.

We also decided to do private banking instead of donating to the hospital registry, because there's no guarantee that a match will be available for your child if/when they get sick. I didn't want to take the chance.

It's true that some diseases can't be treated by one's own cord blood, but many can be cured by the cord blood of a sbling, which is why we banked the cord blood of both babies - so perhaps they could use the other one's blood if the need ever arose.

It is expensive, but still less than we spend on our annual family vacation. I figured that I didn't want to look back & regret not having done it if one of my kids got sick with a disease that we might have been able to cure with cord blood.
 
Just wanted to add my two cents. I used to work for big pharma, and I am generally in favor of all medical advances and technologies and am more than willing (and fortunately able) to pay the cost. However, I had heard and read from several sources that cord blood banking was sort of a scam so I decided to ask some of my former colleagues for their opinions. These people are executives at some of the most well-known pharmaceutical companies. And they told me they did not do it for their own children. Basically, they said that you are paying an exorbitant price for something that may or may not be able to help your child down the line if they suffered from certain very rare conditions. There are very few uses for cord blood currently, and for most of them you would need a sibling's cord blood. And that cord blood would have to be usable, and often times it is not. So we decided not to do it based on our own cost-benefit analysis.

I am not saying that all cord blood banking is a scam, it is not. There are some, albeit very limited uses for it today, and there may be more in the future. My problem with cord blood banking is the way it is marketed. I feel that it should be regulated and only available through medical professionals who have to disclose the possible uses, risks and costs upfront. I received cord blood banking materials everywhere I turned and heard some outrageously untrue things from the people trying to sell it. The receptionist at the place I went for my 3D ultrasound told me they had just found a cure for autism using cord blood. I am pretty sure I would have read about that if it were true. To me that statement was bordering on fraud. I am so turned off by the way that they are praying on the fears of expectant parents.

In my opinion, cord blood banking should be viewed as a very expensive form of insurance which may prove useful in very limited circumstances. If you want to pay for that, it is an individual decision to do so, I just hope that before making the decision to plunk down $$$ (which could be a great start to a college fund), that expectant parents really inform themselves as to the limitations. Cord blood banking won't provide a cure to all, or even most, of the diseases that might affect your child. But if you can afford it and want to insure against that .0001% chance that your child will have a condition that can be treated by cord blood, go for it.
 
We did not do it. It wasn't even a discussion for us. I thought it was a big fat waste of money.
 
NB - great post! After reading it, I'm definitely leaning against doing it. With twins, we just don't have that kind of money to throw around if it may not even benefit us in the future.
 
I'm currently deciding on this as well. NB, I agree with everything you said in your post. Small chance it will be needed and small chance that it will be usable in that case. I am also opposed to the for-profit nature of it all (but so much of health care is for-profit - insurance companies, drug companies, doctors in private practice, private hospitals - what's really the difference?). However, I think about what would happen if, god forbid, someone needed that blood and it could have helped. I would be willing to pay any amount of money if that happened and I could save a child or family member from an otherwise uncurable or untreatable disease. And I would kill myself over having had the chance to make a difference, but having chosen not to because of money (which would seem inconsequential if the need actually arose). Yes, there are a lot of what-ifs...but life is full of unexpected events. So I'm leaning towards banking, but I haven't decided 100% yet.
 
TGal, if you don't mind sharing...was your friend of a friend a representative of some kind of the company? Just wondering if there is any way to get a discount. Thank you.
 
We didn't bank it but intended to donate. With both c-sections though, the drs were too busy with my bleeding and other issues to collect the blood. I don't know if they make more of an effort if it is for banking, but if you need urgent care, I'd assume there is the same possibility that it won't even be collected.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
GET 3 FREE HCA RESULTS JOIN THE FORUM. ASK FOR HELP
Jewelry Blog
PriceScope-Concierge-Ad
Find prime cuts.
Top