Saving the cord blood

Our doctor recommended we consider saving our twins' cord blood. It is quite expensive on top of all of the other expenses for twins, but it seems like a good thing to have just in case.

Has anyone saved their twins' cord blood? what service provider did you go with?

Has anyone actually used the saved cord blood?

Thanks

 

when you say 'expensive' how much does it cost?

 

We did it with our first child, but not with the second and we won't with the twins. To be honest, the cost of it just seems ridiculous, especially when you consider the yearly storage fees. The first time around I feel like we bought into all of the fear, but with no family history of any of the diseases that it could be used for we decided that once was enough. We still pay the storage fees on my daughter's so we do have that if any of our other children have any issues.

 

When I was pregnant with the girls - they were born in Jan 2007, I called Viacord who would not send me the kit because I was expecting twins. At that time they would not bank twin cord blood. I even told them that my girls were di/di and they STILL refused to send me the kits. At that time it was expensive - I think it was going to be like $2500 a year and that was for a singleton. which would be SO worth it if you ever needed it.

 

my Dh insisted we bank the boys and we have the kits here and ready. We went through Alpha Cord and will be banking it in Utah ( we live in Cali ) because they have a huge discount for twins.


37W2D mono/di boys

 

I contacted a cord blood company about donating the cord blood from my twin pregnancy. They told me that they do not accept cord blood from multiples. I'm sure someone does.

 

I was told (2004/05) that I could not due to being pregnant with twins. I did not do it with my subsequent pregnancy.

 

QUOTE(nynjcouple @ Apr 13 2009, 08:56 PM) [snapback]1271735[/snapback]
Our doctor recommended we consider saving our twins' cord blood. It is quite expensive on top of all of the other expenses for twins, but it seems like a good thing to have just in case.

Has anyone saved their twins' cord blood? what service provider did you go with?

Has anyone actually used the saved cord blood?

Thanks


There was a great discussion about this topic at the New York Times' Motherlode blog recently. Here's a link to the post: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03...of-talk-yester/.

One doctor quoted in the post said this:

The odds that the cord blood of any given baby will be needed by that baby later in life are quite small, explained Dr. Steven Joffe, the study’s senior author and a pediatric oncologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School. One reason is that for many of the conditions where a blood cell transplant is the answer, a patient’s own blood cells can not be used, because they would reintroduce the disease you are trying to cure. A sibling donor is almost always ideal, but in most cases, that sibling is still alive and available as a donor, so banked blood is not needed.

Parents who believe in the power of cord blood would do more good donating to a public bank, he suggests. There are obstacles to public donation, however, as not every part of the country has a public bank. New York and Colorado both have large banks, for instance, but in other sections of the United States, public banks are less accessible. So while the debate will become one of health policy, should both private and public banks grow in number, for now the question is less one of morality (i.e., Are families keeping cord blood out of general circulation again the slim possibility they will need it themselves?) and more a question of household economics.

“Families need to balance the high cost of banking such blood against the remote odds of its ever being needed,” Dr. Joffe said in a phone interview. “My personal view and what I think drives the respondents to our survey, is that it’s not worth the cost, especially for people that need to choose how to spend their money, which most of us do.”

 

We did not bank any cord blood from either of my pregnancies.

 

We did it for my first daughter who was born in 2006 through Viacord.. it was only $1800 at the time and then $125 a year storage fee. We think it is completely worth it and for those who think that they are good because they did it for one child so if anything happens to the other children they can just the one they have. Their is a chance they will not be a match and you won't be able to use it. We called Viacord and since we already went through them with my first pregnancy they gave us a huge discount and then gave us another discount for having twins. Originally if we never banked cord blood before it would be $2200 for one baby but we are only paying $2400 for both our twins.

 

I arranged to donate mine for research through the Children's Hospital attached to the hospital in which I delivered. However, due to the circumstances of the girls' birth, they were unable to collect any (I'm assuming because they sent the cord to be evaluated for oxygen saturation as DD 1 was not breathing at birth and they wanted to determine how long she'd been w/o oxygen).

 

[SIZE=12pt]HI, i don't know about saving it, but we have donated it every time :good: [/SIZE]