Cord blood banking. You may have already heard about this, particularly if you are expecting a baby. However, you may not know the benefits of storing this amazing resource.
If you are curious and want to find out more, read on.
What is cord blood?
Cord blood is the blood left over in the umbilical cord once the baby has been born and the cord has been cut. It is full of precious stem cells that can be collected and stored for use in medical treatments and therapies.
The process of collecting cord blood is 100% compatible with delayed and optimal cord clamping and will not interrupt your birth plan. It is safe for both mother and baby as it will only happen once the cord has been cut and the placenta has been delivered.
What are stem cells? Why should I store them?
Stem cells are the building blocks of other cells in the body. They have the unique ability to become specialised cells like heart muscle, brain, and blood cells among others.
There are multiple places that you can get stem cells from including…
– Bone marrow
– Embryo
– Cord blood
Cord blood stem cells have no ethical issues attached to them as they do not harm the mother or baby and are collected after birth and placenta delivery. However, they can only be collected once in a lifetime.
You may be thinking, why would you want to store your baby’s stem cells? Stem cells can be used in the treatment of over 80 + treatments and therapies for diseases like anaemia, leukaemia, and certain metabolic conditions as well as many more. There are also hundreds if not thousands of clinical trials currently in progress further discovering the potential of these little cells.
How to bank my baby’s stem cells?
In the UK at least there are two different ways to store stem cells. You can store them with a private storage bank, or you can donate them for public use.
Public donation means that the cells will essentially go onto a list of donors and those waiting on the donation list that requires treatment could potentially be enough of a match to use them. This service is entirely free and simply goes on your birth plan and hospital notes. The downsides are that you won’t be able to use those cells should you or the family need them and on top of this, only a few hospitals offer this in the UK.
Private storage costs money but what you get is a 100% genetic match to your baby plus a potential match for their siblings just in case they fall ill. Private cord blood banks can work with almost any hospital as well as being able to complete the collection process after a c-section or at a home birth.
Conclusion
This is something for you to choose. If you want to give your family the lifelong safety net of privately storing the cells or donate them to a public bank, that is for you to decide. Either way, it is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to store this precious resource.
Thank you for reading.
