As you are preparing for the birth of your newborn, participating in a cord blood registry may not be something that you’ve even thought about. If you are like most new parents, your thoughts are of decorating the nursery, getting mentally prepared for all of the late night feedings and choosing the perfect name for your new bundle of joy. All of these thoughts are perfectly normal for any new parent, but it is also wise to collect information about any medical issues that could arise.
Immediately after the mother gives birth there is vital blood that could be collected from the umbilical cord. This cord blood contains important stem cells that could potentially save a life. If you do not instruct them to do something else with the umbilical cord and its blood, the personnel from the hospital will automatically label and discard the cord along with the placenta as waste material.
If you choose to participate in the cord blood registry, the decision could actually save your newborn or someone else should you choose to donate this blood. Although cord blood banking might be a new thing for you to think about, this procedure has been around for a long time now and these stem cells have become known for saving lives.
The last thing you would want is to be caught in a position where you could have saved your own child’s life with this blood and then not have it available to you. All parents agree that their children’s health is the most important thing to think about.
There has been some debate among physicians in regards to the cord blood registry and whether or not someone should register it in a private cord bank or a public blood bank for donation. If parents choose to bank the cord blood privately this generally means that it can only be used by a family member that would need this blood. If the cord blood is donated to a public cord bank, it can then be donated to anyone on the cord blood registry.
Any parent would probably consider the health and circumstances of their own child before that of a strangers and rightly so. For that reason, it is understandable that they may choose to go the private blood banking route.
In the unfortunate event that your own child does have some type of blood disease, they may very well require a medical treatment that includes bone marrow or blood transplants. The first people to be tested for this donation will be family members and those that are blood related to the child as this blood has the most likelihood of a successful transplant. However, often times there is not match to be found and it is at this point that the parents would need to turn to the public cord bank registry.
If you’ve already got this cord blood banked, you most likely will not have to suffer through watching so much time go by as well as increasing the likelihood of a successful transplant. Making the decision to bank this cord blood so early can obviously make a big difference if such a medical need does occur.
If you are even thinking of contributing to the cord blood registry, the time to begin weighing your options is well before the birth of your child. It is not the kind of decision that you’ll want to make after you’ve exhausted, emotional and overwhelmed at the birth of your child.
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