cord blood bank

We are going to bank the twins cord blood.did you/ are you going to? If yes, which bank do you use?

 

Congrats on your twins! We banked our first child's cord blood and went with the Cord Blood Registry, www. cordblood.com. We have a yearly fee at the time of my son's bday each year and the process was pretty simple. He is now going to be 5 years old. Good luck to you!

 

We did not do that with any of of our kids.

 

We haven't done it in the past but I think its definitely a good idea... I have heard it is pretty expensive though. Anyone know for sure about how much it costs?

 

I would talk to them about twins.

We were going to donate our babies cord blood but could not for 2 reasons.

1. They will not take twin donations. The chances of cross contamination are very high with twins, even if they share a blood type--different blood types can be totally contaminate the cord blood during delivery/or with possibleshared blood vessels in the placenta. Via Cord said they will take cord blood from twin births, but our hospital/Dr had stricter policies.

2. If you have any complications (greater risk with twins) it may not be possible to collect cord blood. An emergency, premature birth, or other risks make it less likely to get a large enough cord blood sample to store.


We would have donated. But our hospital will only rarely do cord blood collection for an 'agency' (Viacord, Cord registry,etc) with twins stating the above reasons and will not do donations at all (through Blood Bank). We had an emergency -C section and premature twins so it was not an option in anyway.


Not saying it is not possible, but it is trickier with twins and will depend on the Dr/ hospital/agency.


** for single babies, donation is highly suggested and is free for the donater----it is stored in a National Bank and can be used by any baby in need. I wish they suggested it to every mother as an option, otherwise they simply discard the cord blood **

 

No twin cord blood done here either. After working at Childrens Hospital I learned there are many many times you cannot use it to cure disease and the cost is not worth the very small situations when you can. Others would disagree. To each her own, good luck!

 

I'm with Tara. Most of the info I've read states the same, that the cost does not balance the help but donation is good but again some don't take donations for twins

 

Being a single mom, i couldn't even think about affording cord blood banking. i actually checked into it though, because i'm a L&D nurse and we had a CBR rep on our unit and she said she could get me a deal. she lied. anyway, i hear all this talk about people donating cord blood but honestly, i've never worked at a facility (in 11 yrs of L&D experience and travel nursing across the u.s.) where we collected cord blood for donation purposes. it's always only been if the family had paid for the kit and brought it with them. it's a shame. a lot of my patients want to donate, and i hate it when i have to tell them that we have no way for them to do that.