Cord Blood Donation?

[jld128]

anyone thinking about it? anyone done it?

i'm 25weeks and have been reading up on it my problem is i'm in northern ireland and can't seem to find anywhere that does it?

I would have loved to have done it but only certain hospitals offer it, and none of them were near me!

I'm 21 weeks and was looking into this yesterday! From what I can gather it is only certain hospitals in England that will actually carry this out (and even then there are only like 8 of them!).

I'm in Scotland and e-mailed the Blood Donation service and they said I definitely can't do it here as they don't have the resources to facilitate it.

Just seems so wasteful when I know people could really benefit from it!

Yeah, I looked into this and as mentioned above, there's only like 4 hospitals that do it. Shame

I'm in Scotland and I would like to do it. It seems a real shame it is available in so few places.

I did it! At St Mary's in Manchester

It's much better for the blood to go back to your baby via delayed cord cutting (IMO)

I did it at St Mary's in Manchester as well
It was for the Anthony Nolan charity. There are only a few hospitals that offer it (mainly university teaching hospitals if I remember correctly)

You can donate breast milk op, big shortage in NI x

I've read that if a baby is premature delayed cord cutting is very beneficial, but in term babies it can lead to an increased risk of jaundice. Hardly life threatening but it's make me think twice as I wouldn't want to end up having to stay in hospital with him under lamps.

Aaaw it's amazing that people do this! I wasn't aware about it when I gave birth to my 2 despite being on the Anthony Nolan register myself. My ds has had Acute myeloid leukaemia and if he relapses will need a bone marrow/stem cell transplant. We know several children who had transplants using cord blood. Medical science is amazing.

It's such a shame this isn't more widely available! I'm also in ni and looked into it when I was pregnant with my son as our friend had cancer and needed a stem cell transplant. I would definitely have done it, it just gets chucked I'm the bin anyway. Unfortunately he passed away before our son was born. I could understand not doing it if baby was very small premature etc but my son was 8.11. As it was I had an emcs so all those precious stem cells were wasted.

i'm guessing unless i move to Belfast it won't be available to me either over here, i'll defo email and find out though, i'd also heard of waiting until the cord stops pulsating before cutting it so that the baby takes everything out of it but i may of dreamt that one!

i'm hoping to breast feed but if for whatever reason i can't donation the milk sounds like a great idea!

Not totally relevant I know, but we paid privately to have DS's stem cells from the umbilical cord harvested & stored in case he ever needs them

I did this with DD2 and so glad we did. Slightly different scenario as we had NHS blood and transplant there anyway in a planned c section as she was thought to need a transfusion at birth (she didnt)
Got a lovely card and was told that the first thing we did together was save another child's life.

As mentioned before its just selected hospitals though

www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/cordblood/howtodonate/

www.anthonynolan.org/8-ways-you-could-save-life/donate-your-umbilical-cord-blood

Jld I don't think they even do it in Belfast! Just England as far as I know.

I've read that if a baby is premature delayed cord cutting is very beneficial, but in term babies it can lead to an increased risk of jaundice. Hardly life threatening but it's make me think twice as I wouldn't want to end up having to stay in hospital with him under lamps.

www.rcm.org.uk/news-views-and-analysis/views/latest-recommendations-on-timing-of-clamping-the-umbilical-cord

You can still do delayed clamping and donate cord blood. It says so on the anthony nolan FAQS. They will work to your birth plan.

Thanks for the link, Itsall. I think there is probably more to read into through - is there a difference between 1 minute and 5 minutes for example? Definitely something I'm interested in discussing further with my midwife etc. It's down as a query in my birth plan at the moment. I would probably be happy with a minute as that's an official recommendation and would hopefully strike a healthy balance between the risks of early/delayed.

Only certain hospitals, chosen on the basis of the local ethnic mix. We agreed to donate but with our eldest son they didn't collect enough so the donation went for research rather than to be used for another child. With our second child the donation wasn't suitable for other reasons. I had caesareans both times so there wasn't really an option for delayed clamping (as far as I'm aware).