You’ve just discovered your pregnant and probably feeling a little overwhelmed by all the changes that are occurring and all the decisions you have to make. You want to do everything right to ensure that you have a healthy baby and he continues to be healthy while he is growing up. Now, all of a sudden you can’t pick up a magazine on childbirth without seeing advertisement after advertisement on how important it is for you to be saving your baby’s cord blood when he is born and saving it in case he may need it in the future. Now, you have started thinking maybe you should save your babies cord blood and bank it, just in case he needs it someday. Before you rush to any hasty decision there are some things you should know about cord blood banking.
Not Every Hospital is Equipped to Save Cord Blood
The first thing you need to know is that not every hospital is equipped to save cord blood. That means, if you should decide to bank your babies cord blood for possible use, you may have to travel to deliver in a hospital that is in the business of saving cord blood. Depending on where you live and where the nearest hospital is located that saves these stem cells, this could mean traveling a good distance and even spending the last few weeks of your pregnancy in a motel in some strange city. Not something that most pregnant women would look forward too.
What Are The Chance Your Child Will Ever Use His Own Stem Cells
Another very important thing to consider is that no one knows for sure how long the cord blood will stay viable. The chances of your child ever using his own cord blood from his umbilical cord is one in 2,700. Considering the cost of banking your child’s blood cells in a cord blood bank for future use this option may not be something your family feels it can afford.
Cost Of Banking Your Child’s Blood
As things stand, families who want to bank their child’s stem cells for their own families possible future use have to deal with a private cord blood bank. The initial cost of cord blood banking is in the vicinity of $2,000. with annual cord blood storage costs of close to $200.00.
To make matters worse, these banks suggest you use the same umbilical cord bank to bank future childrens blood stems as well. This means if you have three children, you are eventually going to pay a total of $6000 just to get the cord blood stored and an additional $600.00 each year, for storage fees for something your children may never need.
The problem with these costs is that it puts saving the cord cells out of the reach of most families allowing only those who are more well to do to have this “protection against the future” that the magazines talk about. For most families these high storage costs are simply out of the question.
Does This Mean I Should Not Save My Child’s Cord Cells?
Considering the high cost of saving your child’s cord cells, combined with the very low likelihood he will ever need a transplant or treatment where these stem cells will be used it does not make sense to simply keep and store these cells.
However, you still may want to consider saving these cells under the right circumstances. First, if you already have a child or other family member who has potentially transplant treatable disease, then there are programs that will save these stem cells at no cost or limited cost to your family. In cases, where you may actually save a family member, saving the cord in an umbilical cord bank simply makes sense.
If you are giving birth in a hospital that has a public cord donor program you may also want to save the cord blood and donate it to a public cord bank donor program. It certainly won’t hurt you or your child and it could save the life of someone else. Donating in this case would be a very loving and giving thing to do.
The best thing to do is to talk to your health care professional. He will have the latest information on cord blood research and is in the best position to advise you in this matter.