Has anybody or is anybody considering freezing their babies umbilical cord for stem cells?

[Shhhdonttell]

Somebody has advised me to look into freezing my babies umbilical cord as the stem cells can help to fight illness later in life (heaven forbid). I just wondered if anybody has any experience of doing this or maybe you are considering it... I have found this website (it charges around £1500 for their collection/testing and storage service) I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking but I'd like to hear of others opinions/experiences about the whole 'freezing' thing :)

I donated my son's stem cells to the NHS cordbank. Their website www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/cordblood/ is very useful in explaining the issues. The service was free and the cells are available to anyone with a "match". It is only available at a few hospitals at the moment.

I did have some serious doubts when I realised that in theory stem cells could be used to clone a human. This is, of course illegal, but at one point I worried that I had not paid sufficient attention to the dangers to my baby. What if a clone was produced? What could it mean for my son? What could happen?

If it had been a private company, I would have found this even more worrying.

The stem cells only last 10-20 years so the benefits are not going to be much later in life. I guess there will be a more sizeable NHS bank by that time anyway.

Personally, unless there was a hereditary disease like leukemia in your family, I would take that £1500 and put it in some unit trusts. He's more likely to need money than the cells.

I looked into it and would def have done it if it was cheaper, but to be honest the price put me off. I was looking at the Virgin one
www.virginhealthbank.com/

I also realised that I would have to do it for each subsequent child I will (hopefully) have which would really add up .

my friend did this a while ago think they had to use a private company as nothing else was available - must have been about 7 years ago

i think it's sensible - kind of - but would now myself donate to nhs if i was young enough to have a baby

also, my sister used to donate her breastmilk to the nhs too - she over produced!

I think its a shame that more information isn't available about the benefits to the baby of leaving the cord to stop pulsating before clamping and cutting. It only takes a couple of minutes, and allows more of the blood from the cord/placenta to reach the baby. We opted for this for DD as we felt that she may as well have the immediate benefit rather than freeze it on the off chance.

I agree with Tangle - I was all in favour of stem cell harvesting until I found out that it has to be done before the cord stops pulsing - ie before the baby's got all its blood back! We opted to let the cord stop pulsing before cutting it.

I donated mine (rather, DS2's!) for research.

What are the published benefits for cord pulsing?

Highlander - fundamentally it allows the blood in the baby/cord/placenta system to distribute itself, which usually means most of it winding up in the baby. If you clamp immediately after birth a significant proportion of that blood is trapped in the cord/placenta (I've seen estimates varying from 10-40%, IIRC). The current body of research indicates a lot of benefits to delaying clamping the cord and very few (if any) to clamping immediately. You can get lots of details by googling "delayed cord clamping".

Arguably its even more important to delay cord clamping for babies that need a little help to get breathing as they'll continue to get some well oxygenated blood for a few minutes - yet these are the babies most likely to have the cord cut ASAP so they can be whisked off to the resus unit (I've heard a few MWs say the resus unit could easily be brought to the baby, but "policy dictates...").

All that said, the more interventions you wind up with in birth, the more appropriate a highly managed 3rd stage becomes (complete with immediate cord clamping). Like so many other things in parenting its a very personal decision, impacted by lots of factors. I won't say I'll never donate or store but in the absence of increased risk then, given the choice, I'd let my newborn have the cord blood :)