We were going to do the cord blood banking with this one but after a little more research decided not too, our reasons against were

1. At the moment the amount of stem cells they get is only enough to treat a 2yr old
2. If you deliver before 38 wks they generally cannot get enough blood to be useful and we were told this bubba would be early.
3. Obviously i you bank the blood bubba doesn't get it and it can contain up to 6mth iron reserves apparently.
4. DS had a very short cord and I was worried that this one would too and we wouldn't be able to get enouth sample (and you still have to pay about $500 even if they don't get enough)

The company we looked at was about $3000 to collect and store for 18yrs ( btw - they have never used cord blood that has been stored longer than 5 yrs I think)
Hi guys,

As someone who used to work in the industry, I think you may have been misled there, Sarah.

The amount of cord blood they get, I can assure you, is more than sufficient to treat children much older than the age of 2 for a wide variety of diseases. I have seen 10 and 12 year old children have a cord blood transplant for relapsed leukaemia with a single cord blood donation, and it is possible for older children to have "double cord" transplants, where they use cord blood from two donors.

Additionally, umbilical cord length has very little to do with cord blood collection, as what you are actually collecting is the blood from the placenta. The cord is merely the passage through which it flows.

However, you make a very good point that the cord blood contains 6 months worth of iron reserves for a new baby, which is the reason why we have chosen not to donate. We would prefer our baby to get its cord blood at birth.

... because the genetic problems that caused the child’s disease are very likely to be present in their own cord blood, most are cured using cord blood from another child, supplied from a newly established Public Cord Blood Bank.

If we never have another child, what use is William's privately stored cord blood then? I think I felt that the private cord blood storage people were banking on possibilities more than actualities. I realise that the technology is advancing all the time but it is an expensive form of insurance if you don't have that certainty of being able to use it some day.
In actual fact, it might be more use than you might think. You are correct in that stored cord blood is not currently of any benefit for the child who donated it, but it could be of great benefit to that child's siblings. Stored cord blood as an approximately 1 in 4 chance of being genetically similar enough to a sibling to be used if that sibling contracts a disease that is treatable with a cord blood transplant. In other words, if we had donated Molly's cord blood, and Olivia then contracted a disease, there would be a 1:4 chance that Molly's cord blood was a genetic match for Olivia. Matched sibling cord blood is one of the best types of stem cell transplants you can have. The ins and outs of genetics means that most parents can at best be only a 50% match to their children (because they each contribute 50% of the child's genes at conception) unless they were already genetically similar before they married (which happens in some close-knit communities). So, in the absence of compatible parents and relatives, siblings are often the best chance of a genetic match, and sibling cord blood can be of great use in that situation.

Cord blood collectors need to be present at the birth and be close enough to storage facilities to transport the cord blood for storage, which limits the number of hospitals that the service is offered at, and makes it virtually impossible at a home birth. And you have to weigh up the pros and cons, the con being that you are depriving your baby of something that research has shown to be quite useful in the short term (cord blood at birth which is high in iron stores), in case of something that is thankfully quite rare happening in the future (a sibling of that child developing a rare condition). That is why we decided against it. However, if you happen to be at a hospital that offers the service, and you have elected to cut the cord early, then I'd encourage you to consider donating to a public cord blood bank, because in many cases, it does save the lives of other children, and if it is not used before it expires, it can also be used in stem cell research, I believe.