We Decided to Cord Blood Bank

I didn't realize cord blood banking was such a hot topic. Luckily because of that, there are many informative articles written about it. Below are just a few links I found yesterday by simply doing a Google search (in case anyone is interested).

http://www.parentmap.com/content/view/499
http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_newborn/pregnancy/cord_blood.html
http://pediatrics.about.com/od/agesandstages/i/cord_blood_bank.htm
http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jan07cordbloodfaq.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_blood_bank

Most articles speak of the same pros and cons. The only two things that we were contemplating before making a decision were 1) Affect on the baby during cord blood collection and 2) private banking cost.

Affect on baby during cord blood collection
Several articles as well as GGMG moms said that doing the cord blood banking collection may affect the baby. They said that basically a hospital could clamp the umbilical cord too soon and therefore not giving the baby enough blood in the quest to bank as much as possible.

This really concerned me and therefore would have been a deal breaker for me, as the health of my baby now is of #1 importance. I called my OB nurse right away to find out the process and was relieved to hear at least at the CPMC, they know exactly what they are doing when collecting the cord blood. She basically said that when the baby comes out, they hold the baby exactly at the vaginal level so that the baby get not too much or too little cord blood before clamping. Getting too much or too little cord blood would be bad for the baby but they are well aware of that. They collect the cord blood for banking only after proper clamping and it's completely painless. This seems to make perfect sense for me and frankly I am not surprised as even those articles from academics of pediatrics who didn't recommend private banking, recommended donating to public banks. I doubt they would have done that if most hospitals don't know how to do it right and jeopardize the baby's health today.

As a side issue, I was concerned that if the baby was ensured to get enough cord blood, then what if the left over cord blood collected is not enough to be useful later. We asked the CBR rep this question and he said that it has happened before although rarely. CBR's policy is if that happened, we wouldn't be charged at all and the cord blood would not be banked as it is not enough to be helpful anyway. This alleviated my fear of completely wasting money

Cost of private banking
Since most GGMG recommended CBR, we are going to use CBR as well. It costs about $2000 to collect the cord blood and $125 to store it per year with CBR. Assuming a 5% discount rate for 18 year of storage, it would be about $1460 for storage in present dollars or $3460 in total before discounts. Luckily we have a friend and family connection with CBR, so we will get a $600 discount, so the total cost is around $3000 if we paid in full this year.

Now the question is - is it worth it because there is no guarantee we would ever use it? On the one hand, no one has $3000 to spare, but on the other hand our logic is "better safe then sorry."

- we are an interracial couple (Chinese, Philipino, Spanish, and Portuguese), so the likelihood a public bank would have a match if we need it is slim
- odds are still 1 in 1800 for possibility of usage, but this may be rising since California alone is spending billions on stem cell research and more discoveries are made everyday
- someone quoted me that a child can easily cost up to $500K up until college. Relatively speaking, $3000 is just a drop in the bucket compared to that number.
- The stem cell stored could also help a close family member.

All in all, we decided to go ahead and invest in this "health insurance" and hope that we will never need it.

- Lei