The best nation is a donation

There are very few helpful or constructive things I've been able to do over the past 8 months. Maybe more than a few, but I wouldn't be able to name many. I recently cut off a lot of my hair to donate to people who need it and in the coming week (I hope!) I'll be donating our baby's cord blood to a cord blood bank.

There are plenty of blood banks, but many are for-profit banks that parents have to pay for. This means once a baby is born, a doctor or midwife collects samples of blood (they really want the stem cells) from the umbilical cord and the samples are shipped off and stored for safekeeping and possible future use rather than discarded.

Cord blood banking is generally controversial because the major banks are privately run for-profit ventures. They're very expensive, and some say that these companies prey on the fears of new [and affluent] parents. The processing fee alone for cord blood banking on one privately run website is $1920. Storage will run a family another $125 annually after the first year. There is no way of knowing if a baby (or sibling) will need the stem cells or even if a disease that they may have such as leukemia, a blood disorder or other condition would respond to cord blood stem cell therapy.

I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but I would like to think Trouble will be nothing but robust. And if Trouble's robust, then why keep the stem cells? Could other people use them instead? Rather than privately banking our baby's cord blood, I called the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank at Duke University a few months ago.
I had read an article about the pilot blood bank program at Duke and felt it was a good option for us. If Trouble DOES need his or her stem cells and they are available, great. If someone else needs Trouble's stem cells, they could use them instead. While there are some public cord blood banks, there's no national cord blood registry. If the Carolinas program is a success, it's possible that there will be a national registry open to anyone, similar to an organ or blood donation list/bank.

After answering some screening questions and asking my doctor if she would be willing to participate (she needed to complete an on-line training), I received a kit in the mail. It's really a win-win and I'm glad that this option exists. There's an alternative to the pricey cord banking-for-something-we-may-never-need and a way for us to bank the cells in case we do need them-- or that perhaps our baby's cord blood will help save someone else's life some day.