To Bank or Not to Bank

With 2 weeks to my due date, I am still debating whether to do cord blood banking. This is where I ask a company to professionally store my baby's stem cells from her umbilical cord for potential future use (in the rare case that she may need it - I hope not)

As usual, I turned to my trusted community - the GGMG (Golden Gate Mother's Group) for advice. Their yahoo group consists of over 2000 moms who live in SF. I always got prompt and good advice from them. After sending out a post on Friday, I received 13 detailed response in 24 hours. Wow.

After getting this advice, I am not fully decided right now (although leaning toward doing it) and want to do a little more research.

Here is a summary of what I learned so far. The individual responses (very long) are also stored in separate posts.

Summary
Overall, more people did the private banking and was happy with their decision.

• 8 out of 13 responses did the private banking
  
• 1 out of 13 responses did not do it but wish she did
• 4 out of 13 responses did not do it and were happy with their decision

Almost everyone who did the private cord blood banking went with CBR (cord blood registry) given they are very reputable, professional, experienced and is expected to be in business for a long time.

Here are the Pros and Cons I heard from other moms
Pros
- It's like buying an insurance policy that you hope you never have to use, but may regret it if you didn't get it but happen to need it for your baby or family member in the future
- can be very useful for inter-racial couples where genetic match would be hard to find in public banks
- stem cell research is advancing every day and more and more uses /cures are discovered.
- from my own research on Baby Bargain book, cost is around $3000 in present dollars (about $2000 to collect and $125 a year to store). For some people, this is not very expensive considering a baby's pre-school cost in SF can be as high as $25K a year
- There are reputable companies like CBR that you can rely on to do this right and stay in business
- one person quoted that the chances of you using it is 1 in 1800 (I thought this would argue for doing it although she thought it was a good reason not to).
- can potentially help a sibling or other family members (I will need to do more research on this)

Cons:
- My own OB and many OBs recommend against it and think it's useless. My OB said the chance of using is around 1 in 2700. She did it because it was free for her from CBR to do the collection, but she resents the $100+ she is paying for storage each year and that cost seems to increase every year
- too expensive for some moms (cost for storing seems to go up every year unless you pay it all in advance) and sounds like a marketing scam
- Research in adult stem cells taking directly from the adult to cure diseases may render cord blood banking unnecessary in the future (although no conclusive evidence yet)
- affect the whole birthing experience as the OB must cut the umbilical cord quickly to do the storage vs let the baby and mom bond while the cord is still connected
- May not allow baby to get the full benefit of what is in the umbilical cord at birth since it is cut so quickly. One mom claim if the cord is left on longer, the good stuff in it can go into the baby more at birth. (I never heard of this, but will do more research to find out impact)
- the stem cell may be contaminated if there is something wrong with the child already and therefore would not help

I will do some more research. I think I still have a little time since someone said CPMC has the CBR kit on hand so I may even be able to decide when I check in, although I plan to decide before then. stay tuned..

- Lei